Jan 27
2026
Ciminelli plea concludes Buffalo Billion case
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Tesla plant while under construction, managed by LP Ciminelli.
The long-running saga involving allegations of bid-rigging in the construction of the Tesla plant in South Buffalo has finally run its course.
In the past month, Louis Ciminelli and Alain Kaloyeros have entered guilty pleas and agreed to pay fines to settle the government’s cases against them. They avoid any additional jail time. Their previous convictions had been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Their prosecutions followed reporting by Investigative Post more than a decade ago, which prompted Preet Bharara, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to probe the circumstances by which Ciminelli’s company was awarded a contract to build the Tesla plant. Kaloyeros, lobbyist Todd Howe, Ciminelli and Kevin Schuler, a company vice president, were indicted in 2016 on charges they conspired to tailor the bid specifications to ensure the company was awarded $750 million in work.
Howe, regarded as a fixer for then Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Schuler pleaded guilty to charges and then cooperated with prosecutors.
Kaloyeros and Ciminelli stood trial and were convicted in 2018. Both men were fined, sentenced to prison and served time while appealing their convictions, which were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2023. Prosecutors made noises about trying the cases again, but instead negotiated settlements.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomKaloyeros, in late December, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and agreed to pay a $100,000 fine. He will not be required to serve any additional jail time beyond the five months he had served before being released pending his hearing before the Supreme Court.
Earlier this month, Ciminelli pleaded guilty to wire fraud and agreed to pay a $250,000 fine and forfeit $1.6 million, the value of proceeds linked to his offense.
Investigative Post previously estimated that his company, LP Ciminelli, was paid $20 million to $22 million in developer fees for work on the project.
Both men have paid additional prices. Ciminelli lost his company, a prominent development firm. Kaloyeros lost his million-dollar-a-year job as president and CEO of the SUNY Polytechnic Institute.
Kaloyeros presently is the principal at BFD Innovation and works as a consultant. Ciminelli is retired and divides his time between Buffalo, Arizona and Northern California.
Schuler, the other Ciminelli executive, who pleaded guilty to felony charges in 2018, avoided prison time in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors. He was subsequently hired as spokesman by the Republican majority of the Niagara County Legislature, where he continues to work.
Related stories on the latest Ciminelli and Kaloyeros pleas have been published by The Buffalo News and Engineering News-Record.
Championed by Cuomo, the state spent nearly $1 billion to build Elon Musk the plant in South Buffalo to build solar panels. The project was envisioned as seeding a green energy sector in Buffalo, though such spin-off development never materialized.
Investigative Post reported in early 2023 that Tesla’s solar panel business had floundered and that the factory space was instead being used for desk jobs. That work entailed analysts hand-training the self-driving software for Tesla vehicles by reviewing camera footage and identifying objects in frame.
A year later, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that Tesla would invest $500 million in Tesla’s “Dojo Supercomputer,” to be housed at the South Buffalo plant. That preceded the state announcing over the summer it was renegotiating its lease with the company for the sprawling factory. Terms included charging Tesla rent but cutting the penalties the company would owe if it failed to meet its hiring goals.
Tesla, in August, announced it had pulled the plug on the supercomputer project. The company today has generally met its hiring goals but employs a mix of personnel. Tasks include building charging equipment for Tesla cars, refurbishing car batteries and programming self-driving cars. There’s limited work involving solar panels.
