New Jersey businessman who testified against ex-Sen. Bob Menendez won’t go to prison

NEW YORK (AP) — A New Jersey businessman who testified against former Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife at separate bribery trials won’t go to prison, after a judge credited him at his sentencing Thursday for showing honesty on the witness stand and sincere remorse.

Jose Uribe was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Sidney H. Stein, who said he played a crucial role in the convictions “in a major conspiracy involving other countries and corruption of the highest order.”

Menendez, 71, resigned from the Senate after his conviction last year on 16 charges, including having acted as a foreign agent for Egypt. He is serving an 11-year prison sentence. His wife, Nadine Menendez, was sentenced last month to 4½ years in prison.

Their trials featured testimony about hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz convertible that were paid in bribes to the couple by three New Jersey businessmen, including Uribe, in return for actions by the senator on their behalf.

“I’m not going to incarcerate you. I think you’re extremely remorseful,” Stein said of Uribe, who was the government’s star witness at the Menendez trials.

He ordered Uribe to serve six months of home detention, though he can leave home for work, education or religious reasons. The judge also ordered Uribe to forfeit $292,000 and pay $866,000 in restitution.

Two businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, were also convicted in the bribery scheme. Daibes, a real estate developer, was sentenced this year to seven years in prison, while Hana, an entrepreneur, received an eight-year sentence.

At trial, Uribe testified that he provided a $15,000 down payment in 2019 for the Mercedes and arranged monthly car payments from 2019 to 2022 in return for the senator’s help in shielding his company from New Jersey criminal probes of another trucking company.

Uribe apologized for his “terrible” crimes, saying he was “sorry and embarrassed.” He became choked up as he apologized to his family.

“I will never violate the law again,” he told Stein.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz called Uribe’s cooperation brave and valuable, noting that it was “not everyday a cooperator testifies at the trial of a sitting U.S. senator.”

She said it was “easy to imagine why people were not lining up to testify,” since everyone knew that he was a particularly powerful senator who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he was criminally charged in the fall of 2023. Menendez was forced from the position soon afterward.

She called the criminal probe that preceded the trials a “long-running investigation of rare and historic gravity,” and said some of the criminal conduct would have gone unknown without Uribe’s help.

Defense attorney Daniel Fetterman said his client was “actually harassed” as a result of his cooperation, citing a day in April 2024 when two strangers approached his wife outside a bank and asked inappropriate questions.

“That was terrifying for him and his wife,” he said, though he noted that Uribe’s cooperation continued unabated.