On Monday morning, Joe O'Malley will leave the North Wildwood cottage he's called home since his wife left him a year ago. He'll drive about 50 miles to a small South Jersey town called Fairton, where, at around 2 p.m., he'll surrender his freedom. A convicted racketeer, O'Malley will call a federal correctional facility home until Feb. 27, 2008.

"There's no justice," says the 60-year-old father of three with a trio of grandkids, "to any of this."

That's the mantra of any convict, from the Joey Merlinos right on down to the nickel-and-dime smack salesmen of the world. None of them is guilty. Each of them was railroaded.

Thing is, O'Malley was outright screwed. He knows it. And so should you, since the federal government sent him off to prison to protect you.

Born and raised at 28th and Snyder streets, O'Malley became a plumber, and then an L&I plumbing inspector. As per his job description, he'd travel the city checking out plumbing jobs and, if they were up to snuff, signing off on them. As per standard industry practice dating back to the early 20th century, most plumbers would slip a $5, $10 or $20 bill into his hand upon arrival. "When I was a plumber, I tipped," says O'Malley on the shore-house couch, his attention diverted every few minutes by the ring of his cordless phone, which sits atop a stack of court transcripts. "It's tradition. It was done out of respect."

That respect, O'Malley says, came out to a couple beers and a pack of smokes. But about a year and a half before a bug was found in Mayor Street's office, the U.S. Attorney's Office said it amounted to much more. So they videotaped 13 of the city's 14 inspectors covertly pocketing the tips and, in March 2002, charged them with racketeering and extortion.

It was the first salvo in the latest wave of municipal corruption indictments, so the stakes were high for U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan, who declared the tips were "payoffs … to do their jobs."

About six months later, prosecutors started trotting plumbers through the federal courthouse to testify that they'd tipped the inspectors, who earned $40,000 a year. Several were embarrassed to be there; they said the cash had no impact on whether their work was approved. (They declared there was no quid pro quo.) Still, prosecutors maintained, they were municipal employees, not diner waitresses. Tradition or not, being on the take—regardless of how small—violated the public trust. That October, eight inspectors who didn't cut pleas went down on charges generally reserved for La Cosa Nostra: They were now an interstate "criminal enterprise."

Which is why O'Malley, a man with weathered hands and a penchant for cursing, is "so pissed off."

At most, he maintains on the eve of his incarceration, the inspectors should've been suspended without pay for two weeks. But losing his job, pension, medical coverage, wife and two years of his life?

"You can't tell me," he says, "that this isn't a crock of shit."

No, I can't.

The prosecutors and jury may have followed the letter of the law, but imprisoning a guy who loses his breath walking across his living room—asbestos, he says—for pocketing a couple grand doesn't follow the spirit of RICO statutes. (The feds said they took upwards of $25,000 annually, but court testimony had O'Malley making less than $1,900. Makes you wonder how much it costs to house someone in the federal pen for two years, no?)

Had there been a pay-or-get-rejected ultimatum, I'd say lock him up. But O'Malley was used as a "this could happen to you" example for all of city government to see, a victim of selective prosecution.

How else, he wonders, can city garbage collectors who'd charged residents to have their trash removed—aka, to do their job—get back pay rather than jail time? And if he's an extortionist, what does that make L&I, which has the gall to offer accelerated construction permits to people willing to shell out extra coin to a department that, in essence, is just doing its job?

I can think of many people we need protection from in this city. And I can think of several more who've violated the public's trust time and again yet remain in power-wielding positions. Joe O'Malley doesn't make either list.

"It seems like the guys who actually do something wrong get no time at all. It's the shitheads like me, just doing what guys in the trade have done since 1911, that do," he says. "But I'm sorry I took [the tips]. If I'd have known it was gonna end up like this, I wouldn't have done it. The feds, they'll walk on top of you like you're a bug. But that's the punishment for daring to challenge the federal government. I'll have two years to think about it all—you know, does this make me a bad person?"

No, Joe. It doesn't.