Iowa ex-congressman to leave prison
News correspondent
Published: April 9, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Edward Mezvinsky, who was an Iowa congressman in the 1970s, is scheduled to be released from prison Saturday after serving five years for bilking strangers, friends and family out of more than $10 million in get-rich-quick-schemes that sealed his ruin. Mezvinsky, 71, pleaded guilty to 31 counts of fraud -- bank, mail, wire -- and other offenses involving financing bogus oil development and other trade deals in Africa.
Mezvinsky entered prison on Feb. 10, 2003, claiming he was an honest broker who committed the offenses because of financial difficulties but also because of mental illness and harmful medication.
The government said he was a master con man who swindled willing business associates, friends and even his mother-in-law in elaborate pyramid schemes.
Mezvinsky did not respond to requests for an interview before his release from a halfway house detention center in Pittsburgh, and his plans were unknown.
His wife, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, 65, who served in the U.S. House after an award-winning career in television, lives in Philadelphia, where the couple's life crashed. She, too, was silent.
Mezvinsky shaved his sentence of 80 months to just more than five years, serving the last six months in a halfway house day-release program.
Mezvinsky is from Ames, born Jan. 17, 1937, and was on a trajectory for the stars in a career of athletics, government service and civic leadership.
Mezvinsky, a proud populist Democrat and former aide to Iowa Rep. Neal Smith, served four years in the Iowa House, then was elected to the U.S. House in 1972. He soon was thrust into the national spotlight in the Watergate scandal where, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, he voted for the articles of impeachment that drove President Nixon from office.
His tenure and glory were brief. Republican Jim Leach of Davenport narrowly lost to Mezvinsky in 1974 and defeated him in 1976.
Mezvinsky moved to Philadelphia to start a new life as a businessman and philanthropist with political ambitions, along with his second wife -- Emmy Award-winning television broadcaster Majorie Margolies.
Mezvinsky sought a comeback in his adopted state but lost campaigns for the House and later attorney general in 1988. He served under President Carter at the United Nations, promoting human rights.
Mezvinsky and his wife were a popular couple, known for their entertainment, generosity and large family, including adopted children. She left NBC to win election to the U.S. House in 1992, but it was another ill-fated political journey for the family.
Margolies-Mezvinsky cast the deciding vote in the House for President Clinton's controversial tax plan after first declaring her opposition. She was ousted from office in 1994. She now teaches government at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and works separately in a program focusing on women's issues.
Ed Mezvinsky's efforts as an investor and broker of foreign trade deals involving commodities and minerals were as unsuccessful as his second political career. He promised fantastic returns on other people's money on what turned out to be too-good-to-be-true ventures. He used the banking and mail system to transfer and hide millions of dollars to finance business deals that were failures or bogus.
Federal investigators ferreted it all out by 2000 and later secured his plea of guilty. The trial judge rejected a plea of mental illness resulting from bipolar disorder and the effect of a prescription drug for malaria.
Contact the writer: (202) 479-1130 or emmva@aol.c
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Edward Mezvinsky Scheduled to leave prison Saturday
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