Hey Dipy:
Message 11643386
Message 11678433
Dipy: Would you shed that cloak, dagger and mask and come out and say who you are? I don't know whether you remember a show in TV many moons ago. The title was :"What is my real name. Who are you , man
Here is something that will give you indigestion and destroy the pristine image you are trying to project.
What is this ? Corruption. NOOOOOOOO. Salary 50K, Kickbacks ( No tax) $100K
What do you say for this ?
The inspectors accused in the case, who had salaries of roughly
$40,000 to $50,000, earned at least twice that amount in kickbacks,
Ms. White said. The payoffs, she said, were "a matter of routine, year
after year, day after day."
By BENJAMIN WEISER
search.nytimes.com
E ight Federal food inspectors who monitored millions of pounds of
fresh fruit and vegetables sold each year at the Hunts Point
Terminal Market in the Bronx have been arrested in a bribery and
kickback scheme that allowed wholesalers to cheat their suppliers,
Federal authorities said Wednesday.
Under the scheme, the inspectors would declare food at the market to
be of lower quality, allowing wholesalers to pay less to suppliers of fruits
and vegetables, the authorities said. While it did not result in the sale of
tainted or lower-quality produce to the public, officials said, the scheme
resulted in thousands of phony inspections and a system that became so
corrupt that some growers told the authorities they no longer wanted to
sell their produce in New York.
"The benefit to the wholesalers was obvious," said Lewis D. Schiliro,
assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in charge of the
New York office. "They were routinely getting Grade A produce at
Grade B prices, and it's a safe bet they weren't passing the savings on to
the consumer."
The inspectors include 7 of the 14 currently assigned by the United
State Department of Agriculture to Hunts Point, the nation's largest
produce wholesale market. An eighth inspector, no longer assigned to the
market, was also charged, along with 13 employees of wholesalers.
The scheme, which was outlined in a 65-count racketeering and bribery
indictment unsealed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, took place
over two decades, officials said, and was so pervasive that some of the
inspectors took more than $100,000 a year in illegal payoffs, officials
said.
Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney in Manhattan, said that an
undercover investigation for two and a half years, called Operation
Forbidden Fruit, found that inspectors had worked closely together,
collecting payoffs for each other and coordinating their efforts to identify
companies most likely to agree to payoffs.
The inspectors accused in the case, who had salaries of roughly
$40,000 to $50,000, earned at least twice that amount in kickbacks,
Ms. White said. The payoffs, she said, were "a matter of routine, year
after year, day after day."
The inspectors were charged with racketeering and other counts and
were identified as David L. Ball, Paul I. Cutler, and Thomas C. Vincent,
all of the Bronx; Edmund R. Esposito, of East Rockaway, N.Y.; Glenn
A. Jones, of Glen Oaks, N.Y.; Elias Malavet, of Carle Place, N.Y.;
Michael Strusiak, of Stafford, Va., and Michael Tsamis, of Astoria,
Queens.
The 13 employees of wholesalers were each charged with bribery of a
public official.
Marc Rubin, co-president of the Hunts Point Produce Cooperative, an
association of wholesaler produce companies, said in a statement that his
group would cooperate with the investigation.
"We are shocked by today's accusation," he said. "Hunts Point
Cooperative has zero tolerance for any infraction of the law by anyone
who works for or is associated with the market."
As the authorities described it Wednesday, the conspiracy depended in
large part on the fragile interplay between produce wholesalers at Hunts
Point and growers across the country, most in Western agricultural
states, who often shipped their fruits and vegetables to New York over
long distances in large tractor-trailer trucks.
The wholesalers at Hunts Point, who number more than 50, would resell
the fruit across the New York region, up and down the east coast, and
as far west as Chicago, a spokesman for the market said.
A Federal prosecutor, Evan T. Barr, said that typically the wholesalers
entered into agreements with the suppliers specifying the quality of the
produce, such as "U. S. Extra Fancy," as part of a Federal grading
system. The inspections were voluntary and were conducted only if
requested by the wholesalers.
Working through the night from a second-floor office in one of the huge
warehouse-like buildings that line the 113-acre property, the inspectors
would examine the fruit and vegetables for evidence of bruises,
discoloration, or other damage that might have occurred during shipping.
Although the inspectors were supposed to resolve disputes between
suppliers and wholesalers impartially, those charged Wednesday instead
are accused of taking payoffs from the wholesalers of about $50 per lot
inspected, in return "for agreeing to alter the results of produce
inspections by 'downgrading' " the quality, the indictment said.
Armed with such a report, the wholesalers had enormous leverage to
renegotiate the price downward with the supplier, who typically accepted
a lower price for the perishable goods, rather than take them back.
Even the slightest variance in the grade of the fruits and vegetables could
dramatically change the overall contract price, sometimes by thousands
of dollars, the indictment said.
"This is real money from real people coast to coast," said Roger C.
Viadero, Inspector General of the Agriculture Department. "It impacts
the small farmer and the producer, who are the true victims here."
The investigation began after farmers complained to the Inspector
General, Barr said, and it continued with assistance from what he
described as "several honest inspectors."
Barr said the inspectors charged in the case were "an organized group."
For example, he said that after completing an inspection they would "kick
back a portion of the bribe proceeds to the night supervisor, who was in
charge of assigning them to a particular location each morning."
"Inspectors would coordinate with each other," Barr said, "to determine
which locations were 'paying' locations, and which ones were not."
The 21 defendants were each expected to be released on bond
Wednesday, officials said. Their lawyers could not be immediately
identified.
Ms. White said the investigation is continuing.
The F.B.I. and the New York police began making arrests at the market
early Wednesday, about 4 A.M., the officials said.
"Oh man, they were everywhere," one warehouse worker, Ismael
Cancela, recalled Wednesday afternoon. "I never saw anything like it." |
