{"id":124170,"date":"2026-02-26T15:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/124170\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T15:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T15:23:08","slug":"former-reading-mayor-vaughn-spencer-released-from-federal-custody-after-serving-sentence-for-bribery-conviction-berks-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/124170\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Reading mayor Vaughn Spencer released from federal custody after serving sentence for bribery conviction | Berks Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"

READING, Pa. – Former Reading mayor Vaughn Spencer, imprisoned since 2019 after being convicted on federal bribery charges<\/a>, is once again a free man.<\/p>\n

Spencer was released from federal custody on Friday after serving almost six years of an eight-year sentence for his role in a pay-to-play case that found him guilty of trading city contracts for campaign donations. This is according to the Philadelphia Residential Reentry Management Office.<\/p>\n

The former Reading mayor was previously held at a minimum-security facility in Kentucky before being transferred to a reentry center in Philadelphia<\/a> prior to his release.<\/p>\n

Spencer served as Reading’s mayor from 2012 to 2016.<\/p>\n

Federal authorities say Spencer traded city contracts for campaign donations and bribed former Reading City Council president Francis Acosta to try and repeal the city’s anti-pay-to-play ordinance.<\/p>\n

Francis Acosta pleaded guilty in 2015<\/a> to conspiracy to commit bribery and was sentenced to two years in federal prison.<\/p>\n

Acosta’s wife, former Reading School Board president Rebecca Acosta, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison<\/a> following her guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors say Acosta gave Spencer insider information about school district construction projects that the mayor could pass on to a consultant in exchange for a contribution to Acosta’s campaign for district judge.<\/p>\n

At his trial, authorities said Spencer made it clear to donors he would withhold official action from individuals and businesses that didn’t provide satisfactory campaign contributions for his 2015 re-election effort.<\/p>\n

Spencer would go on to lose the 2015 mayoral primary to Wally Scott.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – Former Reading mayor Vaughn Spencer, imprisoned since 2019 after being convicted on federal bribery charges,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1942,1305,6823,464,84,28,128,130,129,1944,58229],"class_list":["post-124170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-bribery","tag-city-of-reading","tag-conviction","tag-federal-prison","tag-mayor","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-release","tag-vaughn-spencer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}