Second Former County Employee Charged In Bribery Scam
NORTH MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) – A second Miami-Dade public works supervisor has been charged in bribery scam.
Garfield Perry, 66, of North Miami Beach, plans to plead guilty to a federal charge that he accepted $150,000 bribes from a contractor, reported CBS4 news partner, The Miami Herald.
Perry is a former Miami-Dade County government employee who oversaw street-lighting projects for the Department of Public Works.
He is accused of accepting payments from a vendor on two home mortgages, one car loan and eight credit cards, among other alleged bribes.
Court documents and the U.S. State Attorney, in return for bribery payments, Perry helped ensure that the contractor's lighting products were used in the county's street maintenance projects.
Perry pleaded not guilty Friday in Miami federal court to conspiring to accept bribes from a government contractor. But he is expected to change that plea to guilty on May 22 under an agreement with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Kaplan.
Perry is the county's second roadway lighting coordinator to be charged with the same conspiracy offense. Earlier this year, George Brown, 51, of Hollywood, who held Perry's job after him, pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from the same contractor and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. Brown, charged last year, admitted he accepted $13,000 in household appliances and other merchandise from the vendor.
To pull off the scheme, Perry allegedly directed the contractor to make checks payable to third parties and, after the checks were cashed, decided how the proceeds would be split.
(©2014 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed material for this report.)
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