FBI Arrests Eagle Rock Resident on Federal Bribery Charges

The FBI yesterday arrested two Department of Building and Safety inspectors—one of them a resident of Eagle Rock—for allegedly accepting thousands of dollars in bribes to approve construction work on residential properties without any inspections.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a news release by the Department of Justice, arrested Hugo Joel Gonzalez, 49, an Eagle Rock resident, and his colleague Raoul Joseph Germain, 59, of Altadena, on Friday following an investigation into allegations that they took cash bribes in exchange for necessary permit approvals on residential construction projects.

Gonzalez and Germain are charged with taking cash bribes in exchange for granting permits on residential projects in South Los Angeles. Gonzalez allegedly received at least $9,000 in bribes and Germain $6,000, according to the FBI.

The FBI began an investigation against the two after a work site supervisor contacted the federal agency in the summer of 2010. The FBI staged an undercover operation in which the informant, who works on residential construction sites, worked with an undercover FBI agent.

According to documents filed with the U.S. District Court in the Roybal Federal Building on Temple Street downtown, Gonzalez allegedly solicited and received $9,000 from a confidential informant and an undercover agent for signing off on approvals required for the permit of occupancy for several properties. The inspector allegedly received $1,500 per property and offered preferential treatment to his bribers.

During the undercover investigation, says the FBI, Gonzalez allegedly said to the informant: "You know, here the idea is for everybody to profit and . . . we help these guys . . . as long as the damn houses don't fall down."

Both Gonzalez and Germain allegedly accepted bribes to approve inspections spanning every phase of construction, from the initial to the final stages. According to the FBI, Gonzalez accepted his first documented bribe in August in exchange for signing inspection cards for two properties—an act that he described to the informant as “preferential treatment.”

For his part, Germain allegedly said in a recorded conversation with the undercover agent that he would “drive by every once in a while, take a look [and] won't even stop and get off.” Germain allegedly took four bribes totaling $1,500 each in return for signing inspection forms for four houses, two of which he never visited.

The Los Angeles City Department of Building and Safety has opened an independent investigation into criminal misconduct in the department after it received an anonymous letter in early January, alleging that at least two of the department’s inspectors were taking bribes, David Lara, the department's public information officer, told Patch.

After enough preliminary evidence had been collected, the two building inspectors now arrested by the FBI were put on administrative leave on Feb. 28, Lara said, adding that the investigation was then handed over to the City Attorney’s Criminal Division and subsequently to the Los Angeles Police Department. (The LAPD’s media relations office said it did not have any information about a corruption investigation at the Department of Building and Safety.)

Both Gonzalez and Germain were brought before U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles F. Eick at the U.S. District Court on Friday in two separate court appearances. Germain was released on a $100,000 bond, while Gonzalez was detained without bail. They both face a maximum of 10 years in federal prison if found guilty.

“Allegations of corruption breech the public trust on many levels and evidence in this case highlights the ease with which the defendants accepted bribes while abdicating the duties honest taxpayers entrusted them to carry out on their behalf," Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI in Los Angeles, was quoted as saying in the FBI news release. "Today’s arrests should be a warning to others looking to line their pockets through illicit transactions at the expense of the city and its residents.”

The affidavits submitted by the FBI in court yesterday (see the pdf files in the photo section for details) contain allegations of larger-scale payoffs in the Department of Building and Safety, indicating that it was not uncommon for developers and contractors to bribe inspectors. Bribery was also allegedly rife among inspectors who paid each other off to gain access to "lucrative" properties not originally assigned to their territories.