NEW YORK — SUNY Polytechnic Institute founder Alain Kaloyeros was convicted of all charges Thursday in his bid-rigging trial, marking the downfall of a Capital Region success story who left war-torn Lebanon to become the face of the nanotechnology industry in New York state.

A federal jury in Manhattan found Kaloyeros and three co-defendants, all prominent upstate development executives, guilty on all counts in the latest successful prosecution of political corruption in the Empire State.

Kaloyeros, 62, of Slingerlands; Louis Ciminelli, 62, owner of LPCiminelli in Buffalo; Steve Aiello, 60, president of COR Development in Syracuse; and Joseph Gerardi, 58, COR's general counsel, were convicted of wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy. Gerardi was also convicted of lying to federal officers.

"I'm just astonished that this is where we are today," Kaloyeros' attorney, Michael Miller, told reporters outside the Daniel P. Moynihan U.S. Courthouse. Miller said his client was "absolutely heartsick."

The jury of six women and six men deliberated at least 13 hours over two days before rendering its verdict at 4:35 p.m.

Kaloyeros was convicted of rigging the bids on state contracts worth more than $850 million that were part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's "Buffalo Billion" initiative, intended to revive the economies of western and central New York.

It stands to tarnish the career of Kaloyeros, who escaped with his life from an attack in war-torn Lebanon in 1975. He left his native country in 1980 for graduate school. In 1988, Kaloyeros received a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Within two years he was at UAlbany, where he taught physics and, eventually, started down the path that led him to the wide success and acclaim at the college he led – and ultimately to his downfall.

Miller said he would appeal and that he looked forward to vindicating Kaloyeros and the scientist's reputation.

"At the end of the day, all he really tried to do is the governor's mission in Buffalo," Miller said. "He tried to take what had worked so beautifully in Albany and make it happen in Buffalo and Syracuse. And the next thing you know he's in court convicted of three offenses."

"Alain Kaloyeros is innocent," Miller said. "He did not rig bids. Not a penny was lost. Not a bribe was paid....we're just utterly disappointed with the outcome of this case."

U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni scheduled Kaloyeros to be sentenced Oct. 11. The co-defendants' sentencings are scheduled for the same week on separate days. All technically face up to 20 years in prison but under federal sentencing guidelines would likely receive far less time.

Steve Coffey, an Albany attorney who represented Aiello, moments after the verdict said, "We're devastated."

Outside court, Coffey and Paul Shechtman, the lawyer for Ciminelli, noted that the retrial of former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was taking place across the hall from the Kaloyeros trial.

Ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was also recently convicted at a retrial before Caproni.

"It's not going to be a good time to go to trial on a case like this," said Coffey, who suggested jurors had made up their minds from the start.

"A lot of citizens in this state think it's dysfunctional and that there's a culture of corruption," said Shechtman, who said he believed his client was innocent and that he is "speechless" at the jury's decision.

Shechtman said he has never been more deeply disappointed in his professional life.

Milton Williams, an attorney for Gerardi, said in a statement with Coffey: "We will be moving to appeal today's disappointing decision, and look forward to clearing Mr. Aiello's and Mr. Gerardi's names."

The verdicts followed a three-week trial that featured the testimony of former LPCiminelli Vice President Kevin Schuler, who until May was a co-defendant in the case. Schuler testified that he engaged in a conspiracy to rig bids with Ciminelli and Kaloyeros.

In September 2013, Kaloyeros allowed the developers to have advance copies of requests for proposals (RFPs) that were to be given out by the Fort Schuyler Management Corp., a nonprofit development arm of SUNY Poly that approved the contracts.

Prosecutors said the men corrupted a bidding process that was supposed to be fair and open, but instead was "cooked" to favor LPCiminelli and COR.

Fort Schuyler issued RFPs in early October 2013 seeking developers for nonspecific SUNY Poly-related projects in Syracuse and Buffalo. COR sent its bid for the Syracuse-area RFP on Nov. 7, 2013. LPCiminelli sent its bid for the Buffalo RFP on Dec. 10, 2013.

On Sept. 13, 2013 Gerardi dictated language be put into the Syracuse RFP and edited the document, at one point suggesting part of it was "too telegraphed." Kaloyeros made sure qualifications be put into the Buffalo RFP, including that applicants have at least 50 years of experience in the Buffalo area, which strongly aided LPCiminelli, which had been around 50 years.

The RFP was later changed to say 15 years after Ciminelli learned of the 50-year inclusion, fearful it would expose the conspiracy to rig the bids.

Prosecutors for Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman told the jury Kaloyeros was motivated not by money but "power and hubris" and the fear of losing his lofty status atop his school, formerly known as the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

David Doyle, who was Kaloyeros' spokesman at SUNY Poly, testified that after the governor was first elected, Cuomo administration officials had "reservations" about Kaloyeros. Doyle said Howard Glaser, Cuomo's former director of state operations, allowed Kaloyeros to remain in his job on the condition that he hire consultant Todd Howe as the governor's "eyes and ears" on the SUNY Poly campus.

Howe, who worked for the governor when Cuomo served as the federal housing secretary for President Bill Clinton, had previously worked for Gov. Mario Cuomo, the governor's late father.

Howe ran a Washington, D.C., subsidiary of Whiteman Osterman & Hanna, an Albany-based legal and lobbying firm. He was also a convicted felon having defrauded a bank of $45,000 in 2010.

Howe, who later admitted he stole roughly $1 million from Whiteman Osterman & Hanna, pleaded guilty to eight felonies in September 2016.

The verdicts signaled the end of the second of two federal corruption trials involving prominent officials in the Cuomo administration. The cases were initially brought by former Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who also led the earlier prosecutions of Silver and Skelos.

In March, a jury convicted Joseph Percoco, the governor's former top aide, on charges he accepted more than $300,000 in bribes in exchange for official state action.

At that trial, Percoco was found guilty of three counts of honest services fraud, conspiracy to commit honest services, and solicitation of bribes and gratuities. COR's Aiello was convicted at the time of conspiring to commit honest services fraud. Gerardi, COR's counsel, was cleared of all charges in that case. That jury could not reach a verdict on a fourth defendant, Peter Galbraith Kelly, a former executive with Competitive Power Ventures, an energy company. Kelly later accepted a plea bargain.

Howe testified in the Percoco trial, but in a stunning development was arrested midway through his time on the stand after admitting during cross-examination that he bilked his credit card company for the cost of a night's stay at the Waldorf Astoria. He carried out that alleged crime after signing a cooperation agreement that required him to stop committing crimes.

Prosecutors did not call him to testify at the Kaloyeros trial, instead relying on his words in emails. The defense later read segments of Howe's testimony from the Percoco trial into the testimony at the Kaloyeros case.

In the end, the strategy worked.

In a statement, Berman said that "true justice can only be achieved through independence from politics or influence, and that has never been more important than today."

In a brief statement after the verdict, Cuomo said the jury had spoken "and justice has been done."

"There can be no tolerance for those who seek to defraud the system to advance their own personal interests," Cuomo said. "Anyone who has committed such an egregious act should be punished to the full extent of the law."