All posts tagged "Briberyandkickbacks"

A former San Diego-area U.S. Border Patrol agent pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to bribery and drug charges, admitting that he was paid at least $110,000 to use his position to help smuggle drugs and undocumented immigrants across the border from Mexico. Hector Hernandez, 55, pleaded guilty to one count each of attempted distribution of methamphetamine and receiving a bribe by a public official, according to his plea agreement. As part of his deal, prosecutors dropped a second bribery charge. Hernandez agreed as part of the plea deal to forfeit $110,000 in drug trafficking and briber......

A defiant Sen. Bob Menendez declared he would not resign Monday and was prepared for his “biggest fight yet,” delivering his first public remarks after the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan unsealed an indictment accusing the New Jersey Democrat of accepting extravagant bribes. “I firmly believe that when all the facts are presented, not only will I be exonerated, but I still will be New Jersey’s senior senator,” Menendez, clad in a dark pinstripe suit, told a crush of reporters in Union City, N.J., where he served as mayor in the 1980s and ’90s. Menendez, who is facing his second indictment......

SAN DIEGO — Nearly 10 years to the day since federal prosecutors filed the first charges in what would come to be known as the "Fat Leonard" scandal and grow into the largest bribery and corruption case in U.S. Navy history, an assistant U.S. attorney on Wednesday admitted to "serious issues" with prosecutorial misconduct. The remarkable admission came during a sentencing hearing for four former Navy officers who were convicted of several felonies during a trial last year. But those convictions were vacated Wednesday, and the defendants resolved their cases instead by pleading guilty to one mi......

MIAMI — A former minister in the Bolivian government who has been in federal custody since 2021 was sentenced to nearly six years in prison on Wednesday for laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes through a Miami bank in exchange for steering an inflated tear-gas contract to a South Florida company. Arturo Carlos Murillo Prijic, 59, admitted as part of his plea agreement in Miami federal court that he received at least $532,000 in bribe payments from a Broward-based company so it could land a $5.6 million contract to supply tear gas and other non-lethal equipment to the Bolivian ......

MIAMI — A former Venezuelan national treasurer and her husband were found guilty Tuesday of accepting tens of millions of dollars in bribes and moving their tainted money to Miami in the first foreign corruption case of its kind to go to trial in South Florida. Claudia Díaz Guillen, and her husband, Adrian Velásquez Figueroa, were convicted after a few hours of deliberations by a 12-person federal jury in Fort Lauderdale of money-laundering conspiracy and related charges stemming from her tenure as a high-ranking official in the administration of her close friend, the late President Hugo Cháve......

MIAMI — A current Drug Enforcement Administration agent and a retired agent — both of whom had worked in the agency’s Miami field office for years — surrendered Friday on corruption charges involving the payment of thousands of dollars in bribes for confidential investigative information about drug-trafficking suspects. The two defendants were charged by federal prosecutors in New York because of conflict of interest issues in South Florida. Manuel Recio, 53, retired from the DEA in 2018 and had worked as an assistant special agent in charge of the Miami office along with other offices over 20......