WASHINGTON (AFP) - Disgraced millionaire superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, newly released from prison, has taken a job at a kosher pizzeria for around 10 dollars an hour, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
Abramoff, once among Washington's most influential powerbrokers, started working this week at Tov Pizza in Baltimore, Maryland where he earns between seven and a half and 10 dollars an hour, according to the newspaper.
"He is not the monster he has been portrayed as," the pizzeria's owner, Ron Rosenbluth, told The Times.
Abramoff served three and a half years at a minimum security prison camp in Cumberland, Maryland outside Washington and now is living at a halfway house which arranged the pizzeria job, the daily wrote.
"People ask me, 'Why would you ever hire Jack Abramoff?' Rosenbluth said.
"I say, 'Why wouldn't I hire Jack Abramoff?' He's paying his debt to society, right?"
Abramoff became one of Washington's leading lobbyists during the Republican rise to power in Congress in the 1990s, and expanded his influence with George W. Bush's capture of the White House in December 2000.
He was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for wire and mail fraud after pleading guilty to defrauding lenders in a Florida gambling boat deal.
He also pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to corrupt public officials, mail fraud and tax evasion in a lobbying operation that involved providing large amounts of money and favors to the offices of Republican members of Congress.
Abramoff's guilty pleas helped force from their jobs two lawmakers, several top Congressional aides and a senior Bush administration official, and contributed to the Republican Party losing control of Congress in 2006.
