Nadine Menendez, the wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez and his one-time co-defendant in a sweeping federal bribery prosecution, surrendered to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons on Friday and began serving a 54-month sentence at the minimum-security federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida.
A representative of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed to the New Jersey Globe that Menendez reported to the designated institution on time.
A federal jury convicted Menendez in April 2025 on bribery, obstruction of justice, and related corruption charges after prosecutors proved that she and her husband accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and other bribes in exchange for the senator’s official acts.
Menendez was originally charged alongside her husband, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein severed her case after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
After her conviction, Stein sentenced Menendez to 54 months in prison and gave her nearly 11 months before she had to report so she could undergo treatment and recover from breast cancer. Menendez made a last-minute bid to postpone the start of her sentence to undergo additional reconstructive surgery, but Stein denied the request.
The Tallahassee facility has housed several nationally prominent inmates over the years, including convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later transferred to a federal prison camp in Texas. It is also home to Narcisa Novack, who is serving a life sentence for arranging the murders of her husband, hotel heir Ben Novack Jr., and her mother-in-law.
Bob Menendez, once one of New Jersey’s most powerful political figures, began serving his 11-year federal prison sentence last June after his conviction in the same bribery and corruption case.
