LawFuel.com –
LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for
the Southern District of New York, and JOSEPH M. DEMAREST, JR.,
the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced that ALBERT
TRANQUILLO III was sentenced today to 84 months of imprisonment
on charges that he bribed the Supervisor of the Mount Vernon
Department of Public Works to allow a carting company TRANQUILLO
and a relative operated to overbill the City of Mount Vernon for
the removal of waste from Mount Vernon city property. TRANQUILLO
also was ordered to pay restitution of $1 million to the City of
Mount Vernon.
James Castaldo, the former Supervisor of the Mount
Vernon Department of Public Works (“DPW”), pleaded guilty in July
2008 to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and accepting bribes from
TRANQUILLO and a relative. Castaldo was sentenced on October 23,
2008, to five years’ imprisonment.
According to a Superseding Indictment filed against
TRANQUILLO earlier this year, TRANQUILLO and a relative operated
A & D Carting Company. A & D Carting obtained a contract with
the City of Mount Vernon in approximately November 2001 to remove
construction debris and tree waste from a City storage yard at a
rate of $397 per 30-cubic-yard container. The contract required
A & D Carting’s invoices to the City to be accompanied by a
“ticket” for each 30-yard container removed.
The tickets were supposed to be signed by a Mount
Vernon employee at the yard at the time each container was carted
away. However, from 2002 through March 2006, TRANQUILLO caused
A & D carting to submit tickets and invoices claiming that far
more waste had been removed than was actually the case. The
scheme succeeded because TRANQUILLO and his relative made
payments to the Supervisor of the Mount Vernon Department of
Public Works, a position held by Castaldo until he retired in
2005. (In his own guilty plea, Castaldo admitted to participating
in the scheme to defraud the City of Mount Vernon and to
receiving bribes from TRANQUILLO.)
TRANQUILLO appeared today at 2:30 p.m before United
States District Judge STEPHEN C. ROBINSON in White Plains federal
court for sentencing. Judge ROBINSON ordered the 84-month
sentence to run consecutive to the undischarged terms of
imprisonment remaining on a 2007 conviction for racketeering.
Mr. DASSIN praised the investigative work of the FBI.
Assistant United States Attorneys ARLO DEVLIN-BROWN and
NICHOLAS MCQUAID are in charge of the prosecution.
09-202 ###
