Former New Rochelle Schools Director Pleads Guilty To Corruption

NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced Tuesday that John C. Gallagher Jr., 53, of Harrisburg, PA, the former Director of Environmental Services for the City School District of New Rochelle, pleaded guilty in White Plains federal court to bribery in connection with a scheme to solicit $150,000 in bribes from an outside contractor to channel school district business to the contractor’s company. The charge was one count of bribery, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said Gallagher demanded and received more than $150,000 in cash bribes from a contractor for the school district where Gallagher worked. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

“As a school district employee, Gallagher was a public servant, whose job it was to do what was in the best interest of schoolchildren and taxpayers. Instead, Gallagher corruptly did what was in his own interests, lining his pockets with bribes,” he said.

“Combatting public corruption at all levels in government remains one of the Office’s top priorities,” Kim said.

According to the allegations contained in the Indictment charging Gallagher and in the Information to which Mauro Zonzini pled guilty on May 9, as well as statements made in related court filings and proceedings: Gallagher, as director of environmental services, could choose which contractors were awarded work by the school district and decide whether, when and how contractors were assigned work and paid.

Zonzini owned a construction company in Westchester County that contracted with the school district to do masonry work, and was hired each year as its time and materials contractor for masonry work.

From in or about 2009 through in or about 2013, Gallagher engaged in a corrupt, criminal scheme, in which he solicited, demanded and accepted bribes in the form of cash payments, intending to be influenced and rewarded in connection with the district’s business and transactions with Zonzini's company.

The bribe payments that he solicited, demanded, and accepted were paid by Zonzini.

Routinely, after the district paid Zonzini for work performed, Gallagher met in person with him in a parking lot, where he provided Gallagher with a kickback in the amount of 10 percent of the payment his company had received from the district.

In this way, Gallagher received dozens of cash bribe payments from Zonzini, over the course of at least approximately four years, which together amounted to more than $150,000.

To avoid detection of his corrupt scheme, Gallagher concealed the cash bribe payments he received from Zonzini and did so, as he admitted during a secretly recorded conversation, by keeping the payments “in my car or in my trunk.”

Gallagher used the bribe money to make credit card payments, car payments and, as he admitted during the secretly recorded conversation, “I paid for some college.”

Gallagher’s sentencing is scheduled for January 9, 2018. Zonzini is scheduled to be sentenced on February 16, 2018.

Image via Shutterstock.