Three former employees of National Grid from Long Island have admitted to taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from a company to which the foursome steered lucrative utility contracts.
Patrick McCrann, 57, of Selden, and Richard Zavada, 65, of Hicksville, pleaded guilty Monday at Brooklyn federal court to accepting bribes and kickbacks from the owners of a Long Island-based contractor a week after Ricardo Garcia, 48, of Stroudsburg, Penn. and Jevan Seepaul, 36, of Rockville Centre, also pleaded guilty in the same case.
“The defendants have admitted to accepting thousands of dollars in bribes and
kickbacks for their own enrichment and to subverting the no-bid process for awarding contracts,” said Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Prosecutors said the contractor secured more than $50 million in facility maintenance contracts from National Grid during the time that the contractor was paying bribes
to the four men, who had the authority to approve “no-bid” contracts valued at less than $50,000.
If the contractor did not pay bribes, the National Grid employees would award the work to the contractor’s competitors, but in exchange for the bribes, the four men also helped the contractor be awarded work in the bidding process by providing non-public bidding information, authorities said.
The bribes were made in cash, the purchase of a recreational vehicle, home improvements, landscaping and an international vacation, prosecutors said. Agents seized about $300,000 in cash from a safe deposit box held by Zavada, according to investigators.
The men each face up to five years in prison, $500,000 in fines, mandatory restitution and forfeiture when sentenced before U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon.
