Posted By: Eugene Taylor

Wed Nov 15, 1:34 PM ET

CUMBERLAND, United States (AFP) - A former super-lobbyist whose corrupt influence-peddling operation contributed to the Republicans losing control of Congress began serving a prison sentence for fraud.
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The millionaire powerbroker was locked away in minimum security facility west of here while his fellow Republicans licked their wounds following a stunning electoral defeat served up by scandal-weary voters on November 7.

"On November 15, 2006, at approximately 6:30 am, Jack Abramoff arrived at the Federal Prison Camp, Cumberland, Maryland, for service of his sentence," the US Justice Department said in a statement.

Abramoff, 47, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for wire and mail fraud after pleading guilty in March to defrauding lenders in a Florida gambling boat deal.

He is awaiting sentencing on his guilty pleas to charges of conspiracy to corrupt public officials, mail fraud and tax evasion in a lobbying operation that involved providing large amounts of money and favors to the offices of Republican members of Congress.

The guilty pleas helped force from their jobs two lawmakers, several top Congressional aides and a senior official in the administration of President George W. Bush.

They also played an important role in the Republican loss of control of both chambers of Congress in the November 7 legislative elections.

Democrats used the Abramoff case and several others to smear Republicans during the campaign as fostering a "culture of corruption", and a CNN election day exit poll found that corruption and ethics was the issue most important to voter decisions, followed by terrorism and the Iraq conflict.

With the prison number 27593-112, Abramoff was committed Wednesday to a 334-bed Maryland all-male minimum-security prison facility 130 miles (200 kilometers) west of Washington, in a valley surrounded by rolling hills, the Justice Department said.

Abramoff became one of the top lobbyists in Washington during the Republican rise to power in Congress in the 1990s, and expanded his influence with Bush's capture of the White House in December 2000.

He operated a high-priced restaurant downtown where politicians and their staff often enjoyed free meals, and he had an exclusive box at a Washington stadium where members of Congress, their staff, and Bush administration officials enjoyed free tickets to rock concerts and sports events.

The Washington charges involved lobbying for native American Indian tribes which operated or wanted to operate gambling casinos, and also lobbying for Saipan and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Those operations linked Abramoff to Tom Delay, the powerful former Republican majority chief in the House of Representatives. Two of Delay's aides were forced to resign their jobs after being tied to Abramoff largess, and Delay finally gave up his House seat earlier this year in the wake of the scandal.

The Abramoff scandal also took down another influential Republican legislator, Bob Ney, who resigned his House seat and pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy and lying charges in relation to the Indian lobbying operation.

Abramoff will live in a room with five other inmates, all sentenced to fewer than 10 years in prison, prison officials said.

In addition to his prison sentence, he was given a three-year term of supervised release, the Justice Department added.

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