Cocktails & Popcorn: DOJ Flushes Another Detroit Official Bathroom Espionage Enterprise Down The Toilet

I bet it is quite the inconvenience when you find out DOJ knows everything you have been doing with your rogue ass crew for years.

For a bit of a backgrounder, you can read it here.

(I have decided to fore go the usual tantalizing visuals of cocktails & popcorn due to the reference  of excrement.)

Bathroom bribes land businessman in prison for one year

A technology company CEO who delivered bribes to a Detroit city official in restaurant bathrooms was sentenced Monday to one year in federal prison.

Parimal "Perry" Mehta, 55, of Northville was sentenced for paying more than $6,500 in bribes to Charles Dodd, the former director of Detroit’s Office of Departmental Technology Services.

Parimal Mehta

U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland sentenced Mehta, the former CEO of Detroit-based information technology company FutureNet Group Inc., three months after Dodd was sent to prison for 20 months.

Prosecutors wanted Mehta to spend 30 months in prison for hand-delivering bribes from 2009 through August 2016 while seeking preferential treatment for his company.

In 2015 and 2016, the city paid FutureNet approximately $7.5 million, prosecutors said.

The bribes weren't always cash. Mehta also gave Dodd a bottle of cognac and paid for the city official to travel to North Carolina.

In all, Dodd received more than $29,500 in bribes from Mehta and another IT company.

Dodd, who had worked for the city since December 2007, resigned in September 2016.

Mehta’s company was a long-standing contractor with the city and won contracts without Dodd’s involvement and after open competition, defense lawyer Steve Fishman argued in a court filing.

“…there is no dispute that the city received full value for the services provided by FutureNet, and those services … saved the city a ton of money,” he wrote.

Mehta has “suffered greatly,” Fishman said.

The Justice Department barred him and FutureNet from receiving government contracts last year, a move that cost the firm more than $30 million and has jeopardized the employment of 100 workers, Fishman said.

The city also canceled a contract with the firm that would have paid approximately $9 million.

"Why would Perry Mehta jeopardize all of the success he has had in his life, both personally and professionally, by becoming involved with Mr. Dodd?" Fishman asked in the court filing. "Rest assured that Mr. Mehta has spent a ton of time since the onset of this case trying to answer that precise question."

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Former Director of Detroit Office of Departmental Technology Services Pleads Guilty to Bribery

Get em.

The former director of the city of Detroit’s Office of Departmental Technology Services (DTS) pleaded guilty today for accepting more than $29,500 in bribe payments from two information technology companies providing services and personnel to the city of Detroit.

Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade of the Eastern District of Michigan and Special Agent in Charge David P. Gelios of the FBI’s Detroit Division made the announcement.

Charles L. Dodd Jr., 46, of Canton, Michigan, pleaded guilty to one count of federal program bribery before U.S. District Judge Robert H. Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan.  Sentencing has been scheduled for Jan. 9, 2017.

According to admissions made in connection with today’s plea, Dodd has held numerous supervisory positions with the city of Detroit in which he exercised discretionary supervisory authority over a staff of dozens of city employees and contractors, and held substantial influence over the administration of multimillion-dollar contracts between the city of Detroit and private information technology companies.

Between 2009 and 2016, Dodd accepted cash payments totaling more than $15,000 and a trip to North Carolina, among other things of value, from an individual who was then the president and CEO of an information technology company, according to the plea agreement.  Dodd admitted that during that same time period, he also accepted more than $14,500 in cash payments from the CEO and an employee of another information technology company.  In return for these cash payments and other things of value, Dodd agreed to provide preferential treatment to the companies, he admitted.

The FBI’s Detroit Division investigated the case.  Trial Attorneys Robert J. Heberle and Nicholas Connor of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Judge of the Eastern District of Michigan are prosecuting the case.

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