USDA Loan Specialist, Two Others, Headed to Prison for Bribery Scheme
A loan specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is headed to prison for a bribery scheme involving USDA grant money.
Roberto Rodriguez of Rio Grande City, Texas, was sentenced to 16 months behind bars and three years supervised release.
Prosecutors say that while working as a USDA loan specialist with the power to approve loans, Rodriguez referred applicants to a USDA home repair program to two contractors who were paying him off with cash for the referrals.
Those two contractors, Daniel Diaz and Jose Sandoval, also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to eight months and six months in prison respectively, plus three years supervised release.
Prosecutors believe that Diaz and Sandoval paid Rodriguez about $45,000 in cash, although Rodriguez only admitted to receiving about $8,000 from each.
“The people of the United States have the right to expect the utmost integrity from those electing to do business with the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani of the Southern District of Texas. “Diaz and Sandoval failed in that duty when they chose to bribe a federal official in order to obtain federal contracts. Rodriguez betrayed his oath of office when he chose to accept payments from those contractors in order to influence who would be awarded these contracts.”
The program that was violated is the USDA Rural Development 504 Single Family Housing Repair Grant and Loan Program, otherwise known as the Section 504 Program.
The program “provides loans to very-low-income homeowners to repair, improve or modernize their homes or grants to elderly very-low-income homeowners to remove health and safety hazards.”
All three of the suspects pleaded guilty in May.
The case was conducted under the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF). Agencies participating in the investigation include the USDA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).