From his apartment in Tenafly, N.J., he dispenses sober advice on things like joining gangs (don’t), homosexual relations (don’t start them) and better bunks (feign epilepsy). He also claims–and we’ll have to take his word here–that he can pull strings to get inmates transferred to friendly and nearby prisons or get them better medical care and food. For such advice Sweeney charges on a sliding scale, anything from $100 or so to $4,000.
The con-consulting business is clearly where some people think the money is. Prison Life, a 20,000-circulation magazine published in Houston, regularly offers serious advice columns by lawyers and nurses. It’s also got an ““Ask Bubba’’ columnist, apparently a former con. Last month he insightfully advised an aggrieved letter writer to buy his foul-smelling cellmate some soap. For Jewish inmates, the Web’s Jews in Prison site offers practical advice from an unidentified prison rabbi. Among his tips: don’t hesitate to complain if assigned to work on a Jewish holiday. There’s also a nuts-and-bolts new advice book, self-published by Ronald TerMeer, a convicted embezzler, aimed at white-collar criminals. ““Beware of the meat dish,’’ he advises. ““Most knives will not cut through the grade of meat served in prison.''
At the moment, though, Sweeney may be the only consultant in it as a full-time business. He first started advertising for clients in late 1993 (in USA Today and the National Law Journal) after he read that the cops in the Rodney King beating were terrified at the prospect of going to jail. ““I thought, here’s a need I can exploit and make some money,’’ he says. Like any businessman, he’s had his setbacks. In 1995 he had to suspend his work because he was, uh, ““away’’ for a year and a day for harassing neighbors. But now, after running new ads a few months ago, he says he’s up to 87 active clients, most of them federal white-collar criminals. (He says he lives on an inheritance from his late parents.)
One client is Paul Sondej of Clifton, N.J., who says he’ll be sentenced soon to 18 months for income-tax evasion. He’s paid Sweeney $1,000 to try to get the Bureau of Prisons to send him to a minimum-security prison, ““a nice place,’’ in his words. Sweeney contends he’s had success doing just that for clients. How? He says he and his associate (Stan Radowitz, a former bank robber) know lots of former prison officials who, for a fee, make well-placed calls to their old colleagues. A Bureau of Prisons spokesman says such claims are nonsense, but Sondej, 62, is willing to take his chances. ““I guess I’ll see if I got taken or not,’’ he says, perhaps not realizing that most tax evaders are sent to minimum-security prisons. Sweeney’s literature is careful to make no guarantees to clients. He claims only one disgruntled client asked for a refund, and he refused. Fortunately, he says, few of his clients are the violent type.
Smart and articulate, like many a swindler, Sweeney does seem to have a knack for working the system. There was the time, for instance, when he decided kosher food tasted superior to the ordinary slop, so he told the prison rabbi that his mother–whose maiden name was Schellhammer–was Jewish. Sweeney, who is Irish, recalls, ““The clergyman, like everyone else, was overworked and didn’t have time to check it out, so I got kosher diets.’’ A confirmed goldbrick, Sweeney advises clients to fake illnesses to get soft prison jobs; he says he used arthritis to get a laundry assignment. ““It’s a lie that doesn’t hurt anybody and makes life a little more comfortable,’’ he explains.
As for rape and violence, Sweeney says his clients’ fears are mostly needless. He tells them that at their age–most are at least 40–homosexuality is usually consensual. And few of these tax evaders and embezzlers will be assigned to the more dangerous prisons where fights break out. Not to worry for Sweeney, though. He’ll never lack for potential clients. Like funeral directors and accountants, convict consultants have a job for life–oops, not a good phrase.
