(“PR”) bonds for his clients who had pending criminal matters before Delgado, when Delgado still presided as a judge.
The scheme purportedly began back in 2008, when Delgado received from Perez a pickup truck valued at $15,000. The truck incident, however, remains an outlier. Rather, the crux of the scheme involved a familiar pattern. Perez would drive to Delgado’s house on the pretense of purchasing firewood from Delgado. Once there, Perez would discuss one of his clients who was appearing before Delgado and express hope that Delgado would release that client on a PR bond instead of holding him for detention or releasing him on a monetary bond.[1] Perez would then pay Delgado an inflated amount of cash for a bundle of firewood and Delgado would invariably release Perez’s client on a PR bond.
Perez eventually came to the attention of the FBI for separate acts of possible corruption unrelated to Delgado, but soon the FBI began investigating Delgado with Perez as a cooperating informant. The FBI had Perez wear a wire and offer payments to Delgado on multiple occasions. The Government further offered proof that Delgado eventually became aware of the investigation and tried to interfere with it.
After considering the evidence presented at trial, the jury convicted Delgado on eight felony counts: conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 371 to commit federal program bribery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) (Count One); federal program bribery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(B) (Counts Two, Three, and Four); use of a facility in interstate commerce in aid of a racketeering enterprise in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1952(a)(3) (Counts Five,
- ↑ While the PR bonds did not require Perez’s clients to put up any money in order to secure their release, the bonds conditionally required the clients to forfeit a sum of money—typically $5,000—should they fail to appear or violate other conditions of their release.
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