The reputed underboss of the New England mob has pleaded guilty to federal bribery charges in a plea deal that will send him to prison for six years.

Carmen "The Cheeseman" DiNunzio pleaded guilty Wednesday to bribing an undercover FBI agent posing as a state highway department official in an attempt to win a $6 million contract on the Big Dig highway project.

DiNunzio is expected to plead guilty next week to separate state gambling and extortion charges.

Prosecutors have agreed to wrap both cases together under one plea agreement and to recommend a sentence of six years in federal prison. Sentencing was scheduled for Sept. 24.

Authorities say the 51-year-old DiNunzio has been underboss of the New England branch of the Mafia since 2004.

Judge Michael Kupersmith issued the sentence to 51-year-old Louise Desnoyers (day-noy-AY') on Wednesday in Grand Isle County after hearing her apology to family, friends and the court.

Desnoyers pleaded no contest this year in the death of Nicholas Desnoyers-Langlois. She had originally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

The judge says he determined that Desnoyers knew what she was doing when she drowned the 8-year-old boy in August 2006.

She told authorities she held her son under water so he wouldn't have to suffer through her impending breakup with his father.

Madoff "discarded me like road kill," Siegman said.

Even before the one-time financier was sentenced to 150 years in prison, Siegman, 65, hobbled out of the federal courthouse and into the media scrum that has followed the secretive money manager from his Upper East Side apartment seven months ago to this sentencing Monday.

There, anger toward Madoff appeared to have shifted more to the regulators that many believe failed to stop the massive fraud. Victims and nearby protesters took the government to task for not preventing Madoff's Ponzi scheme. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said estimated losses for investors were more than $13 billion, but he said that was conservative.

The crush of TV cameras and reporters spilled out into the street in front of oncoming traffic as New York City police tried to hem in the crowd.

Siegman, surrounded by cameras, said she lost 40 years of savings and now scavenges for food. Appearing frail and supporting herself on a walker, she began to feel unwell while speaking with reporters. The questions kept coming even as she ate a cookie to raise her blood sugar.

Thomas Daley, of Phoenixville, put cameras behind mirrors and in ceiling fans in bedrooms, bathrooms and living rooms at five apartment buildings in Norristown.

Prosecutors say it began in 1989 and continued until September 2008. Norristown police were tipped off when a tenant found one of the cameras.

Daley pleaded guilty in Montgomery County on Wednesday to more than 30 counts, including invasion of privacy.

The 46-year-old will be sentenced later. He faces 10 to 151 years in prison.

Defense attorney Tim Woodward says Daley never showed the videos to anyone else and "is extremely remorseful."

The plea deal calls for 250 hours of community service at an Albany health clinic, $22,500 in restitution and a $5,000 fine. Novello faced up to 12 years in prison if convicted on all charges. She was accused of costing taxpayers $48,000 by misusing the workers.

She pleaded guilty to filing a false document involving a worker's duties.

Investigators said Novello, originally from Puerto Rico, used state workers to chauffeur her on shopping trips and rearrange heavy furniture at her apartment while she was New York's top health official. She now lives in Florida.

In court Friday, Albany County Judge Stephen Herrick asked Novello if she had intended to defraud the state.

Crime laboratory reports may not be used against criminal defendants at trial unless the analysts responsible for creating them give testimony and subject themselves to cross-examination, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The ruling was an extension of a 2004 decision that breathed new life into the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which gives a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”

Four dissenting justices said that scientific evidence should be treated differently than, say, statements from witnesses to a crime. They warned that the decision would subject the nation’s criminal justice system to “a crushing burden” and that it means “guilty defendants will go free, on the most technical grounds.”

The two sides differed sharply about the practical consequences of requiring testimony from crime laboratory analysts. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the four dissenters, said Philadelphia’s 18 drug analysts will now each be required to testify in more than 69 trials next year, and Cleveland’s six drug analysts in 117 trials each.