Former Cincinnati City Councilman Jeff Pastor announced his release from federal prison on Tuesday, with a Hello Cincinnati, post on Facebook and Hello Cincy! on Instagram, garnering more than 250 comments welcoming him home.Pastor will finish the last seven months of his public corruption sentence either at a halfway house or home confinement. A Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to disclose his specific location for privacy, safety, and security reasons.Last December a federal judge sentenced Pastor to 2 years in prison for his role in a public corruption scandal that rocked City Hall in 2020. Pastor pleaded guilty to one count of honest services wire fraud, admitting he took a $15,000 bribe while prosecutors said he continued to ask for more money.Pastor arrived at a minimum-security federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky on February 16, where his former colleague city councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, was already an inmate for an unrelated public corruption conviction.Pastor posted photos on Tuesday of himself with his wife, Tara Pastor, and his youngest toddler son, who is one of six children. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jeff Pastor (@jeffery_pastor) Welcome home and happy belated birthday, wrote George Vincent, former managing partner at Dinsmore & Shohl law firm, on Pastors Facebook post.Welcome, former city councilman Charlie Winburn wrote, adding a smile emoji.Pastor is expected to be released from the reentry program on July 16, 2025. The federal prison system gives time off of inmates term for good behavior.Meanwhile, Sittenfeld is still at home awaiting the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on his conviction, more than seven months after a three-judge panel heard oral arguments in Cincinnati.The appellate judges agreed to release Sittenfeld from prison in May while his appeal is pending. He served roughly 4 1/2 months of his 16-month sentence for his public corruption conviction.Sittenfeld has maintained that he did nothing illegal by accepting $20,000 in campaign donations from undercover FBI agents who were posing as developers and championing their project to redevelop a blighted downtown property into a boutique hotel because he was a pro-development politician. A jury convicted him of bribery and attempted extortion in July 2022.In Pastors case, FBI agents arrested him at his home in the early morning hours of Nov. 10, 2020. In addition to wire fraud, a federal grand jury charged Pastor with bribery, attempted extortion, money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was accused of taking $55,000 in exchange for votes on two development deals.In the plea deal, Pastor only admits to taking a $15,000 bribe in October 2018, but he continued to ask for more money afterward.Voters elected Pastor as a newcomer Republican to Cincinnati City Council in November 2017. Six months after he took office, FBI agents say he began soliciting bribes in exchange for official action on two development projects.Pastor flew on a private plane to Miami on a luxurious trip with undercover FBI agents posing as investors in a development project, Convention Place Mall. Pastor explained how he would advance their project and asked for bribe payments, accepting $15,000 upon his return.But Pastor did not stop there. Driven by a desire to profit off his duties as an elected public servant, Pastor continued to solicit bribes from undercover agents and business people working on behalf of the government on multiple occasions, over an eight-month period. His corruption was flagrant, aggressive, and relentless; and it was captured in recorded meetings and phone calls, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Singer wrote in the governments sentencing memo.