Federal prosecutors in San Diego have dropped their criminal case against the third and final defense contractor who was charged with allegedly bribing a civilian Navy employee as part of a wide-ranging corruption scheme centered on San Diego’s Naval Information Warfare Center.
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Prosecutors cited evidentiary issues tied to two key witnesses as their reason for seeking to dismiss the charges against Cask Technologies LLC and one of its former executives, Mark Larsen. Cask and Larsen had been indicted on charges of bribing the San Diego-based civilian Navy employee in exchange for lucrative contracts as part of an alleged conspiracy.
A federal judge in San Diego granted the prosecutors’ request to dismiss the case against Larsen and Cask.
“For nearly seven years, our clients lived under the cloud of false accusations by government witnesses,” defense attorney Aaron Dyer said in a statement. “The dismissal of these charges is the only just outcome.”
Prosecutors told the judge in their motion to dismiss that the evidentiary issues only applied to the charges against Larsen and his firm and did not affect the other indictments stemming from the larger corruption scheme.
“This outcome reflects the justice system working exactly as it should,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement. “When prosecutors received additional information bearing on this case, they reassessed the evidence and made the just decision to dismiss the indictment. This decision is limited to the specific facts of this case and does not affect the government’s other related prosecutions.”
The wider corruption scheme is centered around James Soriano, who worked as an engineer and contracting officer representative at the San Diego facility now known as the Naval Information Warfare Center, or NAVWAR. At the time, the facility was known as Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, or SPAWAR.
Soriano has pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges, admitting that he helped approve lucrative defense contracts for multiple contractors in exchange for a stream of bribes that included pricey meals, tickets to the Super Bowl, World Series and MLB All-Star Game, and no-work jobs for family members and friends who funneled some of their earnings to him. Soriano and a former SPAWAR employee who worked under him are awaiting sentencing, while two of the defense contractors that admitted bribing Soriano have already been sentenced to federal prison.
But Larsen and his firm, the last of the contractors to be indicted, had maintained their innocence and fought the charges.
As part of that litigation, Larsen and Cask’s defense attorneys had made explosive allegations about misdeeds by prosecutors and investigators involved in the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office denied those allegations, and in its response continued to allege there was solid evidence of criminal conduct by Larsen and Cask.
But late last month, as additional pretrial motion deadlines were approaching, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Patrick Swan and Emily Allen moved to dismiss the grand jury indictment against Larsen and his firm, citing “newly discovered evidence (that) impacts the government’s ability to prove the allegations in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt.”
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The prosecutors wrote: “Based on additional investigation, the government has uncovered new information that impacts its ability to go forward in this case. That information was promptly provided in discovery to the defense. Specifically, the government has recently discovered evidentiary issues as to two central witnesses … that impact the government’s ability to introduce certain evidence at trial and to meet its high burden of proof.”
U.S. District Judge Todd Robinson granted the dismissal June 30.
“It is incredibly rare in a federal white-collar prosecution for the government to voluntarily dismiss a criminal indictment by a grand jury, and even more rare for the government to admit a failure of proof even before trial or pretrial motions,” Dyer said in his statement. “We are very pleased … that we have finally been able to clear their names.”
Dyer said the defense team presented evidence to the government that two former Cask employees who were witnesses in the case were the ones actually involved in the corruption plot with Soriano. Dyer alleged that those two witnesses “concealed their own dealings with” Soriano from federal investigators and “falsely claimed that Mr. Larsen and Cask knew about their misconduct.”
Prosecutors did not say exactly what new evidence they uncovered related to the two former Cask employees. Dyer didn’t want to speculate Tuesday about what new evidence the prosecution had found “other than what they’ve told us, which is that they pursued the additional evidence we presented to them and determined that certain witnesses who had been employed at Cask had not been truthful, and that it changed their ability to pursue the case.”
Dyer said he and the defense team did not care about the prosecutors’ motives for dismissing the case, as long as it ended with Larsen and Cask having their names cleared.
“We are so appreciative of the extra effort the government put in to pursue the information we provided,” Dyer said. “Prosecutors don’t always do that, and this was prosecutors pursuing justice.”
The defense attorney said the dismissal will give Larsen his life back. “From a business perspective, we expect that the elimination of these allegations will remove the cloud over his work and over the company’s work, and that there hopefully will be no further repercussions or hurdles to continuing to do business,” Dyer said.
As for the defendants in the related cases, Soriano and his former SPAWAR subordinate, Dawnell Parker, are scheduled to be sentenced in September. Liberty Gutierrez, described in court documents as a close family friend of Soriano who accepted no-work jobs with defense contractors, is set to be sentenced in December.
Philip Flores, the president and CEO of the defense contracting firm IntelliPeak Solutions, was sentenced in January to four years in prison and ordered to pay more than $110,000 in fines and restitution. Prosecutors dismissed a criminal charge against his company.
Russell Thurston, a former executive at the East Coast defense firm Cambridge International Systems, was sentenced last year to 18 months in prison and one year of house arrest. Robinson ordered Cambridge to pay more than $4.1 million in fines and forfeitures for its role in the corruption scheme.
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