FBI Widening Case Involving Altadena Building Inspector

An FBI bribery probe that resulted in the arrest of two Los Angeles building inspectors, one of whom was an Altadena resident, is being expanded to investigate supervisors in the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, according to a Los Angeles Times story.

The paper reports that they received a confidential department memo directed to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that suggests that the FBI is looking to do a department-wide check-up to see if there were any supervisors in the department aware of building inspectors asking for bribes from contractors.

In April,  Altadena Patch and others that Raoul Joseph Germain, 59, of Altadena, agreed to plea guilt to federal bribery charges after he was caught on camera accepting $6,000 in bribes from an undercover FBI agent.

The agent posed as a contractor after the FBI received a tip about Germain and another building inspector asking for bribes.

According to the Times story, the head of the building department wrote Villaraigosa that 10 other agents are being investigated.  Two have been placed on administrative leave, according to the Times.

According to the criminal complaint in Germain's case, Germain and another inspector arrested in the case were accused of taking bribes by a residential developer who had contact with both in the course of doing construction work in the city. 

The informant, who is not named in the complaint, told the FBI that he had personally made 30 to 40 bribes to department inspectors.

Those bribes included paying for vacations for inspectors, buying materials at stores associated with the inspector, or doing construction work at the home of inspectors.

In exchange, the inspectors would forego actually physically inspecting any of the projects they were tasked with checking for compliance with city building codes.