NEW YORK — John F. Good, who developed and directed the FBI’s Abscam investigation, resulting in grainy black-and-white videotapes that showed elected officials accepting bags of cash from what appeared to be an Arab sheik, died Sept. 28 at his home in Island Park, N.Y. He was 80.

Abscam was a two-year inquiry in the late 1970s and early ‘80s in which FBI agents posed as representatives of wealthy Arabs willing to pay bribes for influence.

The idea evolved after Mr. Good, who was running the bureau’s first Long Island office, saw a routine FBI memo about Mel Weinberg, a reputed small-time con man operating in the vicinity. Mr. Good’s bosses had been encouraging him to develop more important cases, and he thought Weinberg might be able to help ferret out wrongdoers, essentially by fooling a lot of people, a lot of the time.

In the beginning, Weinberg pulled in people who were thought to be interested in selling high-priced stolen art. A bureau employee of Lebanese descent was recruited to pose as the potential buyer, a wealthy sheik who was portrayed as owning a company called Abdul Enterprises (the source of the name Abscam).

When the operation targeted the mayor of Camden, N.J., Angelo J. Errichetti, and he proved to be open to further suggestion, the net widened, and the sheik’s story changed. Now he was offering money for influence in the halls of government.

The investigation resulted in bribery and conspiracy charges against US Senator Harrison A. Williams Jr. of New Jersey; six members of the House of Representatives; and a dozen others, including Errichetti. All were convicted.

The sting operation was fictionalized in the 2013 film “American Hustle,’’ starring a shaggy, bearded Bradley Cooper as a composite character representing Mr. Good and two other agents.

In an interview that year with the Washington Post, Mr. Good seemed amused by the renewed attention to the case.