[1] Friedman was born in the Bronx on March 18, 1936,[2] and grew up in the Hunts Point district, where he was nicknamed "Bugsy.
[12] Friedman was later convicted on federal corruption charges in that case, which was presided over by Whitman Knapp and prosecuted by Rudy Giuliani.
[12][13][14] He was removed as the Bronx Democratic Party leader when he was sentenced to a 12-year prison term on March 12, 1987; concurrently, longtime protégé/factotum Stanley Simon resigned from the Bronx borough presidency amid pending criminal charges related to the contemporaneous Wedtech scandal.
In this subordinate role, Simon had served as the principal executor of Friedman's political capital as a statutory voting member of the now-defunct New York City Board of Estimate since 1979.
[15] Having been barred for life from participating in politics and practicing law upon his conviction, Friedman became a hotelier following his release from prison.