Something about that description of Beverly Gallagher slouching out of a Plantation restaurant with a plastic doggie bag stuffed with leftover food and a $2,000 kickback.

Or Josephus Eggelletion taking his out on the fairway, secreted in a golf bag.

Or gunslinger Fitzroy Salesman guaranteeing he could fix the Miramar bidding process because a key city official ``owes me his f-----g job.''

It was the ease with which the three slunk into a criminal repose. As if they had been there before.

When acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman described a ``sense of deja vu'' Wednesday as he announced public-corruption charges against a school-board member, a Broward County commissioner, and a former Miramar city commissioner, he was thinking of other corruption cases. Sloman's office had pursued bribery and kickback prosecutions against three Palm Beach County commissioners and two West Palm Beach city commissioners.

EERIE FEELING

But the criminal complaints that described the charges against County Commissioner Eggelletion, the school board's Gallagher and former Miramar City Commissioner Salesman also conveyed the sense that these three defendants were not unfamiliar with the art of bid-rigging, kickbacks or, in the case of Eggelletion, international money laundering.

Reading the federal complaints, you couldn't escape that eerie feeling: They've been there before.

``Entrapment is not a concern,'' Sloman said. He said it three times, indicating that the undercover FBI agents had not lured three innocents into a strange new world of crime, corruption and doggie bags stuffed with cash.

The criminal complaint against the county commissioner revealed someone skilled enough in secreting illicit assets in Bahamian banks that when certain island connections turned skittish, Eggelletion could assure the agents he would ``just go on to other sources.''

Like an old pro at the money-laundering game, he advised his would-be conspirators to be very circumspect about how much they revealed to the Bahamians: ``The less they know, the better off you may be.'' And last February, like an old hand at sleazy dealings, he allegedly assured the undercover agents he could disguise their transgressions as consulting contracts and make the scheme appear ``legit, straight up.''

The criminal complaint painted Gallagher as someone with a remarkable ability to strong-arm underlings and rig a $71 million construction bid. Surely no novice could have corrupted the selection committee with such equanimity.

Same with Salesman, whose political career, and perhaps his alleged bid-rigging enterprise, was interrupted by his 2007 gun-wielding conviction.

CHUMP CHANGE

The criminal complaints portray three corrupt politicians who were caught conducting business as usual. All three had been nagged, through their political careers, by serious ethical questions and allegations of conflicts of interest while conducting public business, so maybe their arrests weren't so surprising.

More shocking, somehow, was the piddling size of the kickbacks. The feds said Eggelletion got $15,000, Salesman less than $7,000.

And Gallagher, they said, sold out Broward school children for a mere $12,500. Chump change. But I suppose once the waiter packs all that leftover food into the doggie bag, there's only so much room left for a payoff.

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