The con man, Washington lobbyist and convicted criminal Jack Abramoff, who was released from prison a few months ago, has written a book titled “Capitol Punishment” in which he details how $20 million in Mississippi Choctaw Indian funds was spent to defeat gambling expansion in Alabama.

Abramoff was in cahoots with his buddy Michael Scanlon, a former employee of Bob Riley, who was sentenced in February to 20 months in federal prison for his part in the Indian Casino scheme, which conned the tribes out of many millions of dollars for their work in Alabama and other places.

Records from Congressional investigations reveal that Scanlon funneled at least $75,000 to his former boss, Riley, under the heading “Operation Orange.” It was the nickname he gave to his scheme to create a Mississippi Choctaw gambling powerhouse by limiting competition for their casinos in Philadelphia, Miss. In other words, he was paying our former governor’s political campaign to tamp down competition to the Choctaws in Alabama. Riley, during his years as governor, performed his part of the deal to perfection.

Scanlon also laundered $500,000 of his company’s funds to Riley’s campaign through the Republican Governor’s Association in 2002 and gave at least $100,000 to several Alabama Political Action Committees from which huge donations were made to Riley.

The financial records of Scanlon’s company were made public by a U.S. Senate committee that investigated the nearly $70 million Scanlon and Abramoff charged six Indian tribes in the early 2000s for work to keep their competition to a minimum.

It was in those years that the Indian tribes, at the recommendation of Abramoff, hired Ralph Reed, the head of the Christian Coalition, to help protect their gaming interests.

“Time and time again Ralph had shown the world that he knew better than anyone how to motivate the faith community to get politically active. It was obvious to me that the only way to stop Siegelman’s lottery, McGregor and the Poarch Creeks was to organize the Christians …and Ralph could do this in his sleep,” according to Abramoff.

“Scanlon and I came up with another tactic. While Ralph organized the African-American churches to oppose the introduction of gambling, we designed a different campaign for those members of the African-American community who weren’t opposed to gambling. Facing abject poverty and the need for better social services, this community needed money.

“If our efforts to stop the gaming juggernaut (in Alabama) started to falter, we were going to direct African-American leaders to make contact with McGregor and offer their support … in exchange for 5 percent of all gross revenues at all his tracks.”

They believed this would have reduced McGregor’s profitability and made the entire endeavor fruitless. “He (McGregor) would then be torn seeing that a massive block of the African American community willing to support him,” Abramoff writes.

“We gave it a name: Gimme Five. As in, “Give me five percent.”

He says he and Scanlon then started referring to activities they thought were clever as “Gimme Five,” but that the words were later misinterpreted by Sen. John McCain and others as the code name of their entire fraud scheme.

It was instead simply directed at Milton McGregor. 

Aside from several other errors of grammar and spelling in the book, McGregor’s name was misspelled throughout.

The Abramoff/Scanlon efforts for the Choctaws in Alabama were “extensive and expensive and included radio and television advertising” and paying “scores of pastors and voters to lay siege to the statehouse and the Governor’s office.” He writes that over the course of five years they saved the Choctaw’s gaming market, which saved them over $400 million in revenue.

“It cost the tribe approximately $20 million to wage these battles, but the returns were worth it to them. Chief Martin called us the ‘best slot machine’ they had and he wasn’t exaggerating.”

Riley has publically acknowledged Scanlon’s interest and contributions to his 2002 campaign for governor. Here’s what his press office put out in 2006: “A decade before anyone knew the problems he would face, Michael Scanlon worked for Gov. Riley while he was a member of Congress. It is logical that Scanlon would want to support his former boss in his campaign for governor. Bob Riley has been a life-long opponent of gambling in Alabama and that fact will never change, regardless of who contributes money to his campaign.”

I just wonder if Riley has even written the fellow since he was locked up earlier this year. 

Bob Martin is editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent. Email him at: bob@montgomeryindependent.com.