Boy, Tom DeLay sure knows how to pick ’em. We already knew Jack Abramoff, DeLay’s sugar daddy, was a Genuinely Bad Man, but even we are shocked by the latest revelations.

Southwest Florida Herald Tribune:

Jack Abramoff, a once-powerful Washington lobbyist and a key figure in ethics investigations involving House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on fraud charges stemming from an ill-fated deal for a fleet of gambling boats.

Abramoff and a partner in the $147 million purchase of SunCruz Casinos, New York businessman Adam Kidan, were named in a six-count indictment by the grand jury in Fort Lauderdale. Prosecutors say they concocted a fake $23 million wire transfer to defraud two lenders out of about $60 million to finance the deal.

“That document was counterfeit. The defendants never transferred these funds and never made a cash equity contribution toward the purchase of SunCruz,” said U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta of Miami.

They never intended to pay the money? The document was counterfeit? And they thought they wouldn’t get caught? Don’t see how that could work, unless they were going to kill the guy when he found out or something.

The partners bought SunCruz from Greek-born entrepreneur Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis for $147 million in September 2000, but the deal soon fell apart. Amid bitter legal fighting over the sale, the 51-year-old Boulis was shot to death five months later in 2001 what police called a gangland-style hit that remains unsolved.

Oh. They DID kill the guy. Yikes.

Now what was it my mother always said about the people you hang out with? Birds of a feather, maybe, or something about apples and trees.