Former Mayor Patrick Cannon is set to become a free man Wednesday

On Wednesday, Patrick Cannon is scheduled to become a free man.

According to federal documents, the 50-year-old Democrat, the city’s first chief executive convicted of public corruption, will leave the supervision of a federal halfway house and will no longer be classified as a federal inmate.

His location for the past four months has been somewhat of a mystery. Cannon has been a ward of the federal Bureau of Prison’s Residential Re-entry Management Office in Raleigh since Sept. 15 after serving half of a 44-month sentence for accepting bribes from undercover FBI agents.

Whether he has been held in Raleigh or someplace else remains unclear. The U.S. Probation Office in Charlotte did not return a phone call Tuesday afternoon. His attorneys, James Ferguson and Jake Sussman, did not immediately respond to an email from the Observer.

Cannon pleaded guilty in 2014 to pocketing about $50,000 in payoffs from agents posing as out-of-town real estate developers while he served on Charlotte City Council and as mayor. He began serving his sentence in a West Virginia prison camp that November. His sentence also included a $10,000 fine and $50,500 in restitution, which Cannon has paid. He must now serve two years of supervised release.

After the probationary period ends, Cannon would regain his right to vote – and to run for office.

This story was originally published January 24, 2017 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Former Mayor Patrick Cannon is set to become a free man Wednesday."