The Most Outrageous Ways Brian Joyce May Have Broken the Law

Brian Joyce by Lee Toma via Flickr/Creative Commons

Former State Senator Brian Joyce, a Milton Democrat, has been indicted by federal prosecutors on more than 100 counts of mail fraud, money laundering, extortion, and other crimes, according to the Boston Globe.

Joyce, once the assistant majority leader of the Senate, effectively hung up his political cleats in February 2016 when, after federal investigators arrived at his Canton office, he announced he would not seek reelection that November. The Globe reports that a grand jury is investigating to see if Joyce took personal advantage of his position and used his power to acquire free things and special treatment.

The allegations against Joyce comprise more than 100 pages of court documents and are underscored by the thesis that the ex-legislator “used the power and influence of the Senate Office enterprise to extract payments from various individuals and entities in exchange for his official action as State Senator,” according to the files.

Here are some of the wildest things we already knew Joyce allegedly used that power to do:

• Used campaign funds to pay for his son’s high-school graduation party
• Got a special discount on the absurdly fancy sunglasses he gave to Senate colleagues while jostling for a leadership position
• Spent a decade not paying for dry cleaning
• Drummed up business for his private law firm

And here are some of the most head-scratching other actions Joyce is accused of in the new court docs:

• Create a shell company to collect kickbacks from a New York-based energy brokerage company
• Pressure the Milton Planning Board into giving his friend, a real-estate developer, approval to purchase and redevelop the Milton Women’s Club in exchange for gifts like a 2014 Jeep Cherokee
• Conceal parts of his stock portfolio during an ethics probe by creating a fake IRA account as part of a larger bribery scheme
• Push policy that favored the franchise owner of an unidentified coffee chain in exchange for thousands of dollars of free coffee and snacks

Joyce will make his first court appearance at 3:30 p.m. on Friday in Worcester.