The former general manager of Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power was sentenced to six years in federal prison on a bribery case in which he set himself up for a $1 million a year job after retirement.
“The motive here was pure greed and the pursuit of excess riches,” U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Blumenfeld said when he sentenced David H. Wright on Monday. The judge also stated that Wright was “well off” when he committed the crime, earning a salary of $360,000 a year.
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Wright, 62, headed the nation’s largest municipal utility when he convinced the city to hire lawyer Paul O. Paradis for a $30 million contract without any competitive bids. Paradis was to defend the LADWP in a whistleblower-initiated lawsuit over excessive billing practices.
Their agreement in 2017 included a stipulation that Wright would become chief executive of Paradis’s company upon retirement, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The pair also decided to work together on another venture in the city, developing a cybersecurity company in which Paradis would seed $5 million with Wright awarding an LADWP contract and personally receiving a $1.2 million kickback.
In April 2019, Wright urged the LADWP’s board to award Paradis’s company a new cybersecurity contract for more than $10 million.
The FBI began working with Paradis covertly a month later and obtained incriminating texts and emails that were used to flip Wright into an informant as well. He pleaded guilty in January, admitting that he lied to the FBI and destroyed evidence, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“Based on the government’s directions, Mr. Wright recorded numerous phone calls and meetings with a large number of individuals who are thought to be persons of interest in the government’s investigation,” Wright’s attorneys said.
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As a result, two other high-level officials were implicated in the bribery scandal and have pleaded guilty, awaiting sentencing along with Paradis: David F. Alexander, the LADWP’s former chief information security officer; and Thomas Peters, a former litigation chief of the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
