A federal contractor in Alabama has pleaded guilty for soliciting $1.9 million in bribes from a subcontractor.
Victor Villalobos of Enterprise, Ala., struck a plea bargain in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Oct. 23 for accepting kickbacks and tax evasion.
According to court documents, Villalobos, who worked for a federal prime contractor, approached a subcontractor in 2009 and solicited bribes on the condition that he would not engage in behavior that would adversely affect the subcontractor’s business with the prime contractor.
From June 2009 until December 2014, prosecutors said Villalobos received 57 wire transfers totaling $1.9 million in kickbacks from the subcontractor. In 2015, the subcontractor delivered, on two separate occasions, an envelope containing $5,000 and a bag containing $55,000 directly to Villalobos.
To hide the funds, Villalobos arranged for shell bank accounts and filed false tax returns.
Villalobos faces up to 10 years in prison for the brines and five years for tax evasion, in addition to fines.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Caroline D. Ciraolo of the Justice Department’s Tax Division thanked, in a statement, “special agents of IRS-Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations and the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General, who investigated this case, and Trial Attorneys Charles M. Edgar Jr. and Jason H. Poole of the Tax Division, who are prosecuting this case.”
