Anthony Weiner: Disgraced New York mayoral candidate set for prison after 'sexting' underage girl

Democrat will serve 21-month sentence, completing fall from grace brought about by sex addiction that ended professional hopes and marriage to Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin

Anthony Weiner leaves federal courtroom in New York (AP/Mary Altaffer)

A sexting compulsion that cost Anthony Weiner his seat in Congress and a chance to be New York City's mayor is about to cost him his freedom too.

Weiner, a Democrat, is scheduled to surrender by 2pm on Monday at Devens Federal Medical Center in Massachusetts to serve a 21-month sentence for illicit online contact with a 15-year-old girl.

The facility in Ayer, about 40 miles (64 kilometres) west of Boston, has over 1,000 inmates at the medical centre and over 100 more at an adjacent minimum security satellite camp.

Weiner was sentenced in September by a judge who said Weiner's crime resulted from a “very strong compulsion.” A tearful Weiner said he was undergoing therapy and had been “a very sick man for a very long time.”

Amid a sexting controversy involving women, Weiner resigned his House seat in 2011 only to have new allegations doom his 2013 run for mayor.

Last year, a criminal probe into his sexting with a high school student intruded into Democrat Hillary Clinton's bid for the White House. Then-FBI Director James Comey announced in late October 2016 that he was reopening the probe of Clinton's use of a private computer server after emails between Clinton and Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin — formerly Clinton's closest aide — were found on Weiner's laptop computer.

Two days before Election Day, the FBI declared there was nothing new in the emails. But in a recent interview, Clinton called Comey's intervention “the determining factor” in her defeat.

Abedin and Weiner are in divorce proceedings.

At sentencing in Manhattan federal court, Weiner attorney Arlo Devlin-Brown said his client likely exchanged thousands of messages with hundreds of women over the years and was communicating with up to 19 women when he encountered the teenager.

AP