Former Monroe County public officials and business executives in elaborate bid-rigging scheme
ROCHESTER – An indictment of four individuals for an elaborate scheme to rig the bidding process for several multimillion-dollar contracts was announced on Wednesday by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Nelson Rivera and Robert Wiesner – both former Monroe County public officials – along with John Maggio and Daniel Lynch – two local business executives – have been charged with a total of 43 felony counts, including Money Laundering, Conspiracy, Falsifying Business Records, Offering a False Instrument for Filing, and Combination in Restraint of Trade and Competition.
The indictment alleges that the four men colluded to steer the process for awarding Monroe County contracts, funneling money to preferred vendors. Lynch and Maggio conspired to launder roughly $2 million through payments from Navitech Services Corporation to Treadstone Development Corporation. Separately, Lynch laundered more than $100,000 in stolen proceeds from contracts between Catalog & Commerce Solutions and both Siemens Building Technologies and Upstate Telecommunications Corporation (UTC). In both cases, the defendants engineered their schemes by creating fake contracts, inflating subcontracts, and submitting false invoices. The proceeds were used by these individuals for their personal benefit, including luxury golf tournaments and payments to political campaign accounts.
“The process for awarding contracts is supposed to be fair, competitive, and unbiased. Sadly, our investigation found that some local officials abused this crucial responsibility and rigged the process to steer county funds to favored corporations that spent money on country club golf outings, expensive sporting events, and political contributions,” said Schneiderman. “Cases like this only serve to undermine the public’s trust in government and the way it awards contracts—making it all the more important that we continue to work with Comptroller DiNapoli to crack down on the abuse of public funds and brazen political corruption we’ve seen here and across the state.”
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