Last Thursday, Rep. Tierney's brother-in-law Daniel Eremian was sentenced for racketeering related to his involvement in his brother Robert Eremian's illegal offshore gambling organization.

After his sentencing, he told reporters that Tierney had known about the illegal business and that Tierney's wife Patrice was told to take the fall for it in order to save Tierney's political career.

And now, the fugitive Robert Eremian himself is reportedly saying the same.

The Boston Globe is reporting that, in a telephone interview from the Caribbean, Robert Eremian said he could confirm his brother's claim and said that Tierney lied about his involvement to avoid a House Ethics Committee investigation.

Robert Eremian has reportedly lived in the Caribbean for 10 years and is wanted on hundreds of racketeering charges and operating an illegal offshore gambling business out of Antigua.

Patrice Tierney pleaded guilty in 2010 to filing false tax returns and managing a Massachusetts bank account into which money was funneled from that offshore business.

Congressman Tierney's Republican opponent, former Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei, has been pressuring Tierney for weeks about the family scandal.

"John Tierney now says he and Patrice had no idea about the criminal enterprise until he heard about it from the government's recent case against bro-in-law Daniel Eremian," Tisei said in a statement. "Essentially, he's only owning up to knowing once the public started knowing. That is insulting and unbelievable. John Tierney may be, at best, willfully blind. But the voters aren't."

The Tierneys have denied the Eremians' claims that Congressman Tierney knew about the illegal activity and insist that those claims come from family grudges and not truth.

"It shocks and saddens me to learn that my brother would say something so utterly false about me and my husband in a moment of desperation and anger," Patrice Tierney said after Daniel Eremian's accusation Thursday.