(WXYZ) — Former Detroit City Councilman Andre Spivey was sentenced to two years in prison Wednesday morning after pleading guilty to a bribery charge back in September. He will also have 1 year of supervised release afterward with community service and has to pay a $25,000 fine.
Spivey is expected to report for prison in July.
Spivey took more than $35,000 in bribes over several years from a Detroit towing contractor who was working with the feds.
Federal prosecutors wanted to see Spivey do jail time and were hoping judge Victoria Roberts would sentence him to 3 years.
The defense pleaded for probation, saying that Spivey has cooperated with the feds, who say the 47-year-old took eight bribes over five years.
“We've been cooperating with the federal government for a year and a half," Spivey's defense attorney Elliot Hall said. "It's not as though he's getting big globs at one time where he can buy a car or do something very expensive.”
“Make it look like a napkin,” is what federal prosecutors say the former Detroit City Councilman instructed a confidential source to do with cash during one of his eight recorded bribes.
“I dont want to touch it right here,” court documents claim Spivey said about the money.
The source, a Detroit towing contractor who was working with the feds.
While prosecutors point to the judge that "Spivey's criminal conduct was not a one-time slip or an isolated serious lapse of judgment,” the defense says the 47-year-old former pastor became "Entrenched in a cycle of financial distress.”
They say he considered the confidential source a friend and the money loans.
The defense also says this wasn’t pay to play, and that Spivey’s City Council Votes went against the source’s business interests.
Of course, this is just one piece of this scandal involving city hall. In August, the feds raided the homes and offices of two then-council members Scott Benson and Janee Ayers.
Neither has been charged with a crime.
Benson remains on council and Ayers lost her re-election bid in November.
