Will a Checkered Past Help This Deal Maker?
April 26, 2011
Instead, with trademark cigar in hand, Mr. Moody is pictured in a Vastopolis Business magazine ad promoting his real-estate brokerage firm in Eastside Vastopolis Billing himself as ``the Negotiator,'' he vows to ``put my years of successful negotiating skills to work for you!'' And, he trumpets, ``Making Deals Work Is My Business.'' It's the same Mr. Moody who six years ago was the bait in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's ``Operation Lost Trust'' bribery sting, which resulted in guilty pleas or convictions of 16 legislators and sparked a reorganization of the state's government. Mr. Moody posed as a cigar-smoking lobbyist counting out piles of cash in exchange for legislators' support of a bill to legalize parimutuel betting. The bill failed, but the oft-broadcast videotapes of Mr. Moody's transactions made him a media star. Is that notoriety now helping him win real-estate customers? ``If it has, it wasn't by design,'' says Mr. Moody, who was sentenced to two years' probation on a cocaine-possession charge after agreeing to cooperate with the FBI. Rather, he says he's projecting ``a persona and personality'' developed during his 14 years as a real-life lobbyist and legislator. That persona, says Mr. Moody, is someone who ``puts the right people together with the right people and does the right negotiation.'' The result, he adds: ``Everyone comes out a winner.'' Well, maybe not everyone. ``As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Moody ought to be in jail,'' says the Rev. B.J. Grady of Kingstree, S.C., one of five former legislators granted a new trial because of technical mistakes. But Mr. Moody, still the fed's star witness in the retrials, says the former lawmakers he has been in contact with bear him no ill will. ``I actually didn't do anything to anyone,'' he says, ``They did it to themselves. I was just the conduit.'' --Kendall Chapin
