Sentencing Delayed for Building Inspector in Bribery Case

An Eagle Rock resident who was scheduled to be sentenced Monday afternoon on federal bribery charges to which he pled guilty in May won’t know his legal fate until October.

Hugo Joel Gonzalez, an inspector with the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, agreed with federal prosecutors that he accepted thousands of dollars in bribes for granting permits on South Los Angeles residential projects, some of which he never inspected.

A colleague of Gonzalez’s from Altadena, Raoul Joseph Germain, 60, to accepting $6,000 in bribes for granting permits to homes he did not properly inspect or never visited. Germain’s sentencing, also in the court of Judge Snyder, is scheduled for September 19, Akrotirianakis said.

Gonzalez, 49, will be now be sentenced at 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 3 because of scheduling conflicts between the prosecution and the defense, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Akrotirianakis, the prosecutor in the case.

“There were some factors that needed to be addressed as far as Mr. Gonzalez’s sentencing goes,” Akrotirianakis said, adding that Oct. 3 happened to be “a convenient date for both parties.”

Gonzalez, who had entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors earlier this year, pleaded guilty to one count of bribery before Christina Snyder, a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Central District of California, located downtown on 213 N. Spring St.

Gonzalez will be sentenced in the same court in October. He faces up to 10 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000, or twice the gross gain—or gross loss—resulting from his offense.

The FBI arrested both the inspectors on April 8 following a sting operation. They were subsequently dismissed from work by the Department of Building and Safety, which has said that their corrupt behavior is not typical of the department.