Arrested by the feds and charged by Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Joe Nocella with wire fraud conspiracy for stealing millions with his pal Sam Sprei, defrocked Brooklyn judge Edward King shows everything that is wrong with how state judgeships are filled. The system in place to prevent schnooks and crooks from becoming judges (as much as it is a system) failed at every step and it all happened after this column sent up warning flares about King at the very beginning, which were ignored.

Now facing 20 years in federal prison, both King and the state courts would have been much better off if he had never become a judge.

The voters were bypassed and all the checks — the judicial screening panels of the Brooklyn Democratic Party and the New York City Bar Association, Gov. Hochul, the state Senate and the state Office of Court Administration under Chief Judge Rowan Wilson and Chief Administrative Judge Joe Zayas — failed as King moved from private lawyer rapidly up the judicial ladder from Civil Court to state Supreme Court, where he and Sprei allegedly used a phony escrow scheme to swindle millions from duped investors.

It started in 2022, when Brooklyn Civil Court Craig Walker was running for a new 10-year term. He had no challengers and so his name didn’t appear on the June primary ballot and would run unopposed in the November election. But on Aug. 4 Walker was tapped for a spot on state Supreme Court by the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

Walker then declined his Civil Court nomination and on Aug. 16 it was handed to King by the Brooklyn party boss, Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn and Frank Seddio, a former assemblyman and former Surrogate Court judge (who this page chased off the bench) and former party boss, who is now on the Board of Elections.

Seddio remains a power and a judgemaker and he has been linked in several of the civil suits filed against Sprei.

We took notice of King in 2022 because as a candidate for Civil Court in the November election he never filed his mandatory personal financial disclosure statement due within 20 days after he became a candidate and he never completed the mandatory campaign ethics education program that he was required to complete 30 days after he started running. Court rules state that “A candidate who fails to complete the training at all, or fails to complete it in a timely manner, will be subject to discipline.”

On Nov. 5 we wrote that “Edward King neither completed his disclosure form nor took the ethics course,” and of all the judicial candidates in the whole city, he was the only one who failed to do both.

The City Bar’s screening panel also rated King as “Not Approved,” the only Brooklyn Civil Court countywide candidate to flunk that year. He was a triple crown loser on the ethics scoreboard but he still was elected that year.

King became a Civil Court judge on Jan. 1, 2023. But then in June 2024, despite just 18 months on the job, Gov. Hochul nominated King to be an interim justice on Brooklyn state Supreme Court. Did her own screening panel take a close look at this guy or was he just pushed along by Bichotte Hermelyn and Seddio?

King appeared for the state Senate judiciary committee on June 5. His hearing lasted about 2 minutes before he was unanimously approved and sent to the Senate floor for his confirmation. Did the Senate take a close look at this guy or was he just moved along, pushed by Bichotte Hermelyn and Seddio? We blame the whole Senate because they don’t keep records of their votes on confirmations at the committee level or the full Senate (which is another failure).

So King then became a state Supreme Court justice and he immediately applied to be certificated to serve beyond the mandatory retirement of age 70. OCA and Zayas agreed and granted King a two-year extension from Jan. 1, 2025 through Dec. 31, 2026. Did OCA and Zayas take a close look at this guy or was he just moved along, pushed by Bichotte Hermelyn and Seddio?

This is what the feds allege: On Feb. 26, 2025 the duped investors wired $6.5 million to King’s escrow account. That same day King moved the money. In April 2025, the investors requested the return of their deposited funds, which didn’t happen. Someone told the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which on Dec. 10 confronted King. He resigned on Dec. 31 and on Wednesday agents from the IRS Criminal Investigation arrested him and his pal Sprei.