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A federal decide on Tuesday sentenced a key determine within the sprawling corruption scandal on the Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy and town legal professional’s workplace to just about three years in jail.
U.S. District Choose Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. ordered Paul Paradis, a former legal professional turned cooperating witness for the federal authorities, to serve 33 months — greater than the 18-month sentence advisable by prosecutors.
Paradis’ attorneys sought to have their consumer keep away from jail and pointed to the quite a few undercover operations undertaken by Paradis for the federal government that helped result in responsible pleas within the corruption case.
The decide’s sentence seems to mark the ultimate chapter within the federal legal investigation that has engulfed Metropolis Corridor since FBI brokers first raided a number of authorities places of work in the summertime of 2019.
Paradis was one participant within the scandal, which targeted on a sham lawsuit over inflated DWP payments that was crafted by town, a part of an audacious plan for town to sue itself so as to shortly settle the slew of claims filed by DWP clients.
Paradis admitted to taking a virtually $2.2-million kickback from one other legal professional engaged on the DWP case. He additionally took half in different bribery schemes, in accordance with prosecutors.
Blumenfeld, in delivering his sentence, cited Paradis’ lengthy authorized profession. He mentioned that Paradis, an aggressive plaintiff’s legal professional from New York, had a “eager” mind and was “blessed with appeal and charisma.”
However in the end, Paradis went down a path of corruption. “Mr. Paradis was on the middle” of a “grasping and corrupt” scheme,” Blumenfeld mentioned.
Paradis, in his remarks to the decide, expressed regret over his actions. Standing on the lectern, he additionally publicly accused former Metropolis Atty. Mike Feuer of mendacity to the grand jury and to investigators, based mostly on statements Paradis mentioned have been made by an FBI agent in an affidavit for a search warrant.
Individually, Paradis has filed varied paperwork, together with State Bar and ethics complaints, accusing different attorneys, together with Feuer, of mendacity or different wrongdoing.
Feuer has lengthy denied wrongdoing within the case.
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Speaking to reporters after the sentencing, Paradis mentioned he was “devastated” by the sentence.
Regardless of admissions in court docket paperwork by prosecutors that town’s authorized scheme was recognized by different high personnel within the metropolis legal professional’s workplace, the U.S. legal professional’s workplace in the end charged solely two attorneys with crimes.
Prosecutors have declined to elucidate their charging selections, however a spokesperson for the U.S. legal professional’s workplace mentioned earlier this yr that, usually talking, the workplace doesn’t pursue costs when “each aspect of a federal offense” isn’t established.
The DWP estimates that the scandal has value town greater than $120 million.
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