A Beverly Hills developer was sentenced Thursday to 4 years in jail for bribing a Los Angeles County official in what prosecutors described as one of many greatest corruption instances in L.A. historical past.
Arman Gabaee, 61, admitted giving a county official dozens of money payoffs throughout furtive conferences in vehicles, eating places and males’s rooms whereas reaping profitable real-estate leases in return.
The developer additionally provided to purchase the official, Thomas J. Shepos, a $1-million residence in return for the county spending $45 million to lease workplace house at a Gabaee property in Hawthorne.
U.S. District Choose George H. Wu rejected the federal government’s request for a nine-year jail time period however agreed to its suggestion of a $1.1-million nice that Gabaee should pay by the tip of March. Wu known as the case an instance of “systemic” public corruption.
“There’s a lot of it going round,” the decide mentioned.
The developer, who additionally goes by Gabay, informed Wu that his payoffs to Shepos had been “an remoted state of affairs that I’m very, very ashamed of, and I’m very embarrassed about it.”
“I perceive I did one thing improper, and I encourage for you for leniency,” he mentioned.
Gabaee was co-founder and co-managing accomplice of the Charles Co., a growth agency in Hollywood. He pleaded responsible in Might to 1 depend of bribery.
“This is without doubt one of the largest corruption instances on this district’s historical past,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Lindsey Greer Dotson informed Wu as she argued Thursday for a harsher penalty.
Citing FBI wiretaps indicating probably corrupt Gabaee dealings with different public officers, she mentioned, “This was only a minuscule sampling of how this defendant does enterprise.”
“I don’t know if I can go fairly that far,” Wu responded.
From 2010 to 2017, Gabaee made month-to-month $1,000 payoffs to Shepos in return for county leases, enticing rental phrases, nonpublic data and different advantages.
As a senior official within the county’s actual property division, Shepos negotiated leases between property house owners and the county. The leases had been topic to approval by the Board of Supervisors.
In December 2016, Shepos began cooperating with the FBI, which quickly recorded him taking extra bribes from Gabaee. Shepos pleaded responsible in 2018 to creating false statements to the FBI about bribes and signing a false 2014 tax return.
Gabaee was recorded providing to purchase Shepos a million-dollar home in Northern California wine nation in return for a 10-year lease that will make L.A. County the anchor tenant of his Hawthorne Mall property.
Gabaee shortly moved to promote the property, saying the long-term $45-million lease from a dependable tenant made the property’s market worth soar in a single day from $17 million to $500 million, based on the federal government.
“His seven-year spree of month-to-month money bribes, culminating in an enormous million-dollar bribe, was not [born] of economic or emotional desperation — however immense, deliberate, and virtually unfathomable greed,” Greer Dotson and Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas F. Rybarczyk wrote in a memo to the court docket. “He had all the pieces, and but it was by no means sufficient.”
A number of dozen Gabaee relations and associates attended the sentencing. A number of of them sobbed loudly after Gabaee acquired 4 years in jail. About 150 supporters wrote letters to the decide in search of leniency for Gabaee, together with some expressing gratitude for the developer’s items to charity, in accordance Robert Shapiro, his legal professional.
Shapiro known as for 18 months in residence confinement and no jail time for Gabaee. He urged Wu to provide Gabaee credit score for his rehabilitation of properties in impoverished sections of South L.A.
“Arman deeply regrets his silly and self-destructive determination to make the illicit funds to Tom Shepos,” Shapiro and different Gabaee attorneys informed Wu in a memo.
“His honest hope is that the Court docket will weigh this error in opposition to his exceptional observe document of investing within the inside metropolis and offering first-rate properties for lease to the neighborhood as an entire.”