He says his daddy made him do it.
The son of disgraced ex-state Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. blamed his father for pressuring him into participating in the looting of their Soundview Healthcare nonprofit as a judge yesterday sentenced him to prison time.
“Over the past year, we have been at odds, as he wanted to fight this,” Pedro Gautier Espada, 39, whined as he was sentenced to six months in the big house — and an additional six months in his own home on a monitor.
“I wanted to take responsibility and move forward with my life,” Espada told Judge Frederic Block during the Brooklyn federal court hearing.
But the judge, who last week sentenced Espada’s dad to five years in a federal pen, wasn’t buying the sob story.
“He engaged in the same criminal activity that his father did. He didn’t have to do that,” Block noted.
Still, he conceded that the younger Espada “was kind of under his [dad’s] dominant thumb.”
Citing the health issues of his wife and one of his young daughters, Gautier Espada pleaded for leniency on sentencing of the misdemeanor tax and theft charges.
“This has been an exceptionally difficult several years. Not a day goes by without immense regret about how things were done at Soundview,” he said.
Prosecutor Carolyn Pokorny shot back: “You can’t steal from a charity. No matter who you are, whose son you are.” And, she blasted, “It’s not his dad’s fault that he hasn’t filed a tax return since 2008.”