Crime Commission: Former 15th JDC contract employee involved in kickbacks
LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) A bribery scheme of kickbacks that involved a former contract employee within the 15th Judicial District, Lafayette's District Attorney's has captured the attention of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
The commission president, Rafael Goyeneche, says he has never seen anything that "even approaches the case in terms of its scale and its adverse impact to the credibility of the criminal justice system in Lafayette and potentially in Baton Rouge.
Dusty Guidry pled guilty to three counts of bribery in connection to a federal program fraud case. Essentially, he admitted to his culpability of having received over $800,000 in bribery payments.
Reportedly some of that money was by vendors that provided services to the Lafayette District Attorney's Office and the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
Goyeneche believes if Guidry wasn't brought to justice, he would have accelerated his scheme.
In fact, the number of people going through the pre-trial diversion program in Lafayette to help nonviolent offenders get a second was said to be growing..
"In his guity plea he acknowledged lowering the standards for the diversion program to get more participants in which benefited him financially and the vendors that were paying bribes to him."
Goyeneche says it's a stunning corruption of justice of the criminal justice system. He says keep in mind the federal government is only charging Guidry with periods of time they had wiretaps in place which only span about 15 months.
"In his guilty plea he acknowledged that one offender paid a $25,000 bribe to get into the diversion program; and that to me suggests that offender probably was not eligible for diversion."
Goyeneche says not only did Guidry admit his culpability in receiving bribe payments from vending companies, but he also cooperated with federal law enforcement; confirming there were public officials who were part of the scheme and he shared some of his bribe payments with them.
"He never is going to be held accountable for everything that he did but it's going to prevent him from continuing to do this for the years to come he would have continued to serve. He was making so much money wasn't going to slow down."