The Wild and Wooly Tale of Frank Seddio and $2 Million in Missing Cash

For decades, the lawyer Frank Seddio has been a power player in Brooklyn's Democratic Party, rising to be the "consigliere" of party boss Vito Lopez in the 2000s and taking over leadership of the party in 2012 when Lopez resigned in disgrace. Seddio only faded—somewhat—out of the spotlight when he was replaced by the current head, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, in 2020. But one thing has remained consistent: Seddio has wielded, and still wields, considerable influence over the party's nomination of judicial candidates. His fingerprints are all over Brooklyn courts, with judges across the system owing their tenure at least partly to him.

In a city where Democratic nominees reliably prevail in the general election, and in a state that gives local parties a significant role in selecting its nominees for criminal, civil, and surrogate's court judges, the Brooklyn Democrats' judicial selection process "has always been opaque, intentionally obscuring who is doing favors for who," said Tony Melone, the president of the New Kings Democrats, a reform organization. 

Melone added, "There is enormous potential for corruption in the way that the party chooses judges."

Last year, Seddio boasted to a reporter that his role in the Brooklyn Democratic Party's judicial selection process has "managed to allow me to be a part of selecting at least, maybe, 60 [New York] Supreme Court judges."

What has all that gotten him? Well, a suite of ongoing lawsuits filed over the last two years allege that Seddio has used his familiarity with the Brooklyn courts to run legal interference for a brazen embezzlement scam by a Brooklyn businessman—a scam that, if the host of lawsuits are to be believed, the businessman has run again and again.