Last week, the sentence of Michael Jarigese was upheld by an appellate court. Mr. Jarigese had been sentenced to 41 months of imprisonment and three years of supervised release in connection with a bribery case.
Mr. Jarigese was the vice president of Castle Construction Corporation, and the president of its successor company, Tower Contracting LLC, when he signed three contracts with the City of Markham for public construction projects.
Before awarding the third contract to Castle, Markham’s Mayor Webb asked Mr. Jarigese to hire his KAT Remodeling company as a subcontractor. The subcontract was to remove and haul construction debris and to level the ground at the third project. KAT Remodeling and Mayor Webb has no construction background and the invoices were bogus.
Mr. Jarigese paid for the bogus contract with a $75,000 check. The remaining $25,000 was paid by stopping by the Mayor’s office with some coffee cups. But instead of coffee, the cup was full of $2500 in cash.
The jury only took two hours before convicting Mr. Jarigese and his construction company for honest services wire fraud and federal bribery.
What was unusual about this case was that Mayor Webb was the cooperating witness for the prosecution. He had identified those contractors who had paid him bribes. He was working with prosecutors to help reduce the sentence for his conviction of wire fraud and tax fraud. Typically, it’s the contractors and other bribe payers who cooperate with the government and testify against the politicians who took the money.
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