Another Navy Employee Goes Down for Bribery
James Soriano, of Las Vegas, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from various defense contractors in return for helping them obtain government contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release.
In return, Soriano received bribes in the form of free meals, rounds of golf at private country clubs, tickets to high-level sporting events and employment for some of his associates. Through his illicit kickbacks, he was able to obtain tickets to the 2018 MLB All-Star Game, the 2018 World Series, and the 2019 Superbowl. He secured a job for a family friend, Liberty Gutierrez, who was then paying Soriano $2,000 a month out of her salary. Additionally, Soriano pled guilty to charges related to filing a false tax return in 2018 for not disclosing the cash payments from Gutierrez.
“Mr. Soriano betrayed the trust the U.S. Navy placed in him by using his position to wrongfully enrich himself and others, ultimately at the expense of the Department of Defense (DOD) and the American taxpayer,” Bryan D. Denny, Special Agent in Charge for the DOD Office of Inspector General said in a press release. “His guilty plea should act as a deterrent for others contemplating or attempting to misuse a position of public trust to subvert the integrity of the government’s acquisition process.”
Between May 2015 and October 2019, Soriano operated a pay-to-play scam alongside coworker Dawnell Parker, conspiring with multiple defense contractors. In exchange for the kickbacks, Soriano would allow the defense contractors to draft official documents and then submit them as part of the official procurement process of the DOD. Soriano would then advocate on behalf of the contractors helping them win contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of the defense contractors that colluded with Soriano, Cambridge International Systems, Inc., also pled guilty and admitted that Russell Thurston, the former Executive Vice President, was involved in the bribery scheme, and the company profited to the likes of roughly $7.5 million, according to prosecutors.
This kind of activity undermines the official procurement process and raises questions about the efficacy of the people in charge of these programs. In May of this year, Robert Burke, a retired four-star Admiral who once oversaw Naval operations in Europe, Russia, and Africa, was arrested for his role in a bribery scam also involving government defense contracts, according to a report from the DOJ. Burke is accused of using his influence as an Admiral to help secure government contracts for a company in exchange for a future role in that same organization. He was later hired with a starting salary of $500,000 a year and granted 100,000 stock options. If convicted, Burke faces up to 30 years in federal prison.
All of this comes on the heels of one of the most embarrassing Navy corruption cases in history, where Leonard Glenn Francis, also known as “Fat Leonard,” amassed tens of millions of dollars by overbilling the Navy for port services to docked Navy vessels for close to a decade. To keep the scam going, he bribed dozens of Navy officials with cash, prostitutes, first-class airfare, meals, designer goods, top-shelf liquor, champagne, and collectibles, according to a DOJ press release. Over 30 U.S. Navy officials and their associates plead guilty as a result of the investigation into Fat Leonard.
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