Two former San Francisco Department of Building Inspection construction plan engineers are under scrutiny, being charged for their involvement in an honest services wire fraud conspiracy. The United States Department of Justice reports that the two received bribes in return for speeding up and approving construction permits.

Rodolfo “Rudy” Pada, 68, of Millbrae, California, and Cyril Yu, 41, of San Francisco, had criminal charges filed against them yesterday. Evidence suggests Pada accepted bribes as far back as 2003, continuing through to his retirement in September 2017. To bribe Pada, a construction planning and design firm offered cash, meals, drinks, and other benefits. Pada in return, expedited and approved permits for building and construction plans. Additionally, the charges accuse him, of soliciting, accepting, and concealing an interest-free $85,000 loan from a planning and design firm executive.

The Information on Yu claims bribes were made from January 2018 to February 2021. He was similarly compensated with cash, meals, drinks, and other incentives from a construction planning and design firm, granting quicker permit processing for building and construction plans in return.

The United States Department of Justice reminds us that DBI is a regulatory body for San Francisco. It manages the enforcement of building, electric, plumbing, and housing codes for over 200,000 buildings in the city. DBI reviews and grants approval to construction plans, ensuring their legality and safety for the city’s inhabitants.

The United States Attorney’s Office’s Corporate and Securities Fraud Section is prosecuting the case, led by Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Ward and Ilham Hosseini.

Until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, those who are implicated are presumed innocent. Should they be convicted, Pada and Yu face a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a monetary fine of $250,000. 

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News

From Jorge Fitz Gibbon

May 31, 2023 | 10:35 p.m

Warning: Graphic content

Former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a controversial progressive prosecutor who was fired by voters last year for his soft-crime policies, is taking over as head of a new criminal justice center at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

Boudin, 42, has been named executive director of the school’s Criminal Law & Justice Center, he announced Wednesday in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“In my new role, just as I did as District Attorney, I will continue to draw on networks of attorneys, activists, judges and legal practitioners to support reform and advance safety in a way that is rigorous, principled and responsive to the lived experiences of the communities directly affected,” he wrote.

“The center will systematically evaluate the results of specific policies and communicate to the public what policy changes are essential to improving public safety and equity,” Boudin said.

“Electoral politics will only advance the criminal justice reform movement so far. Winning a few major elections alone is not enough to bring about lasting change. I learned a lot during my tenure, including that people’s feelings are often more important than data and facts.”

Boudin, who faced criticism in the City of Gold as a criminal prosecutor, was voted out in a recall election in June – and announced in August he would not seek to retake the post.

Chase Boudin, 42, the progressive San Francisco prosecutor who was ousted from office by voters in June, said he is now the founding director of Berkeley Law School’s new Criminal Justice Center. AP

Critics said the left-wing prosecutors’ policies contributed to a rise in crime in the city, as drug dealers publicly sold their wares and shoplifting and robberies were rampant.

About 60% of San Francisco voters voted in favor of recall.

But in his editorial, Boudin stuck to his progressive stance, claiming that it’s Republicans and the “sensational media” that are making public safety an issue – calling it an “artificial frenzy.”

“In New York state, officials have rolled back pre-trial release reforms for poor people who cannot afford bail,” Boudin said.

Boudin has been named executive director of the school’s Criminal Law & Justice Center, he announced Wednesday in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle.MediaNews Group via Getty Images

“Meanwhile, despite widespread claims of funding cuts, police budgets across the country have skyrocketed without demand for accountability.

“Even in liberal San Francisco, the mayor’s office shut down a regulated drug consumption facility while tightening surveillance of drug users, with results that were both predictable and tragic: the city is experiencing by far its deadliest year from drug overdoses on record.”

At Berkeley, Boudin will conduct research and advocate for criminal justice reform, the school’s dean said in a press release announcing the move.

“Since joining Berkeley Law, I have wanted to create a criminal justice and justice center to further advance the important work our amazing faculty and clinics do in this area,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkely Law School, in a statement.

“I am very excited to open the center and that Chesa Boudin will be its first managing director,” said Chemerinsky.

“Chesa was selected after a nationwide search and has extensive experience across the criminal justice system. He has thought deeply about the system and I can think of no one better able to establish and lead this important center.”

Boudin is the son of Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, who were members of the far-left terrorist organization Weather Underground.

Both were convicted of murder and serving decades of prison time in the deadly 1981 ambush of a Brink armored truck in Rockland County, New York.

The 14-month-old future prosecutor grew up in Chicago with adoptive parents.

“Both of my birth parents were arrested when I was a baby and together served 62 years in prison,” Boudin wrote in his editorial.

“A lifetime of visiting her behind bars, coupled with the years I spent as public defender and then as elected attorney general, have shown me the disastrous failure of California and the country’s current approach to justice.”

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The former San Francisco fire commissioner, who said a homeless man brutally attacked him with a metal pipe, has been accused of instigating the April 5 altercation.

Attorneys representing homeless man Garret Doty said video evidence showed that former San Francisco Fire Department Commissioner Don Carmignani was the attacker and that he doused Doty with bear spray. They also claimed that Carmignani may have been involved in other incidents involving the spraying of homeless people in the Cow Hollow and Marina District neighborhoods.

Carmignani’s attorney, Nick Colla, said his client was “repeatedly hit with a metal rod” by Doty as he retreated nearly two blocks from the original point of contact.

He also denied that Carmignani was involved in any of the other alleged incidents.

“It is unfortunate that the narrative has shifted to the victim’s alleged story while the focus is not at all on the defendant’s well-documented history of violence and harassing behavior,” Colla said in an emailed statement.

Doty was arrested April 5 and charged with assault with a deadly weapon and battery. San Francisco prosecutors said he was acting in self-defense and asked prosecutors to drop the charges.

He was being held in the San Francisco County Jail. A judge on Thursday ordered his release after failing to appear in court for a preliminary hearing.

Prosecutors said Carmignani could not testify in the case because he sustained injuries in the alleged assault. The hearing was postponed to May 23.

On Wednesday, prosecutors released two videos they received from prosecutors. The video shows a man “fitting the physical description of Carmignani” unprovokedly approaching homeless people, according to a press release from the Public Defender’s Office.

“Prosecutors released this evidence because they believed it was relevant to the circumstances surrounding Doty,” the press release said.

In video of the April 5 incident involving Doty, a man appears to be pulling a can out of his jacket pocket. Doty is not seen being sprayed or Carmignani being attacked with the whistle.

In the video, Doty can be seen running away before turning to face the man. In the video, Doty appears to walk away several times while the man follows him.

Doty, left, appears to be walking away as the man follows him. Office of the San Francisco Public Defender

Doty’s attorneys said Carmignani approached her client and sprayed him with bear spray.

“There was a fight between the two men. A third witness told police she heard Carmignani threaten to stab and kill Doty if he did not leave the area. Doty responded to Mr. Carmignani in self-defense,” the public defender’s office said.

The second video, dated November 6, 2021, shows a man spray-spraying a homeless man on Magnolia Street. The public defender’s office said the victim was asleep and the perpetrator took “additional measures to spray him intensely in the face.”

On November 6, 2021, a person in San Francisco appears to spray-spray a homeless man.Office of the San Francisco Public Defender

The public defender’s office charged Carmignani with being involved in seven other bear spray incidents, one of which was on November 11 in which the attacker unzipped the victim’s tent, sprayed bear spray inside and told the victim to “leave my town.” “. .”

In one incident on Jan. 6, the attacker spray-sprayed a man and a woman, took the woman’s wallet, cellphone and earrings, and threw her dog on the ground, the public defender’s office said in a press release.

Carmignani’s attorneys said he was not the man in the 2021 video and denied his involvement in the other incidents, NBC Bay Area reported.

They also released four videos of Doty pulling a long metal gun out of a trash can and attacking Carmignani. In videos obtained by NBC News, a man can be seen repeatedly brandishing a metal object before punching Carmignani twice. Another video shows the man armed with the metal object chasing Carmignani.

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Carmignani told San Francisco-based KPIX-TV on Tuesday that he has had nightmares of someone attacking him since the alleged beating.

“I’m lucky if I get two hours of sleep a night at all,” he said.

He said he had two head wounds and needed a plate placed in his broken jaw.

Minyvonne Burke is senior breaking news reporter at NBC News.

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Ex-San Francisco DPW Director Sentenced to Seven Years in Corruption Case | Engineering News Record

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s former public works director, who pleaded guilty to steering public contracts and taking pricey gifts, was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison in a corruption case that ensnared several City Hall officials and insiders.

Mohammed Nuru in January pleaded guilty to what federal prosecutors described as “a staggering amount of public corruption” during his time leading the city’s Department of Public Works. Federal prosecutors said that over a 12-year period, Nuru accepted more than $1 million in money, international trips, jewelry, restaurant meals and other goods and services from city contractors and developers in exchange for preferential treatment and confidential information about city business.

“This is a tale of greed as old as time,” federal prosecutors said in a court filing requesting that Nuru, who they described as the “quintessential grifter,” serve at least nine years in prison, get three years probation upon his release and pay $35,000 in fines to deter other officials from doing the same. Nuru’s attorneys had asked for a three-year sentence, which Judge William Orrick said didn’t “come close to recognizing the gravity of this case.”

Orrick agreed with prosecutors saying it was important for the sentence to “make clear that public corruption cannot be tolerated in a democratic society. When it’s discovered, it should come at a high cost for its practitioners.”

Orrick said he considered the good things Nuru has done in life when issuing his seven-year sentence in a packed courtroom. He also sentenced Nuru to three years of probation and ordered him to pay $35,000 in fines.

Authorities said that much of the bribe money paid to Nuru went to fund his ranch in Colusa County where he planned to retire. As part of a plea agreement, Nuru forfeited the ranch that federal prosecutors called “a monument to his grifting.”

The mortgage on the sprawling property “was partly paid by laundered bribes from city contractors, with a large home custom-built and furnished by city contractors, on grounds maintained with the help of equipment and soil provided by city contractors,” federal prosecutors said.

In exchange for his guilty plea on the fraud charge, prosecutors agreed to drop additional charges, including lying to the FBI and money laundering.

The sweeping City Hall corruption probe topped prominent leaders, including Harlan Kelly, the former general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, who is accused of receiving thousands of dollars in travel expenses, meals, jewelry and repair work on his house.

Mayor London Breed, who dated Nuru more than 20 years ago, was not charged with any crimes but admitted to receiving $5,528 for car repairs and a rental car in 2019 from him.

More than 100 family members, friends, and former colleagues sent letters of support for Nuru, who was known as Mr. Clean because of his efforts to clean San Francisco’s dirty streets, praising his dedication to his five children, who he raised as a single father, and his work for the residents of San Francisco, and describing him as kind and hard-working.

Public Works Deputy Director for Operations DiJaida Durden wrote to the judge asking for leniency for her former boss, explaining that she worked for Nuru for 19 years starting as a cement mason.

“He wanted us to take pride in how our city looks,” she wrote. “Mr. Clean certainly fit his style of working because not only did he encourage staff to take care of the city, he did it himself.”

In a four-page letter to the judge before sentencing, Nuru apologized for violating the trust of the people of San Francisco, saying his behavior left him in constant anxiety but still, he did not stop. He highlighted his health problems and asked for leniency and a second chance.

“I accept full responsibility for violating the public trust,” he wrote. “I hope and pray that the sentence will allow me to demonstrate afterwards that I have learned my lesson.”

Nuru, 59, was among the first of 12 people and three corporate entities to face federal charges due to the Department of Justice’s probe into public corruption in the city and county of San Francisco. After he was arrested in January 2020, he agreed to cooperate with the investigation and not disclose his arrest but shortly after told multiple people being investigated about the probe. He then lied to the FBI about his disclosure.

Last year, a recycling plant owner was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison after stating in a plea agreement that she plied Nuru with gifts that included a $36,500 gold Rolex watch. Florence Kong, who owned SFR Recovery Inc., was the first person to be sentenced as part of a federal probe into citywide corruption. Contractor Alan Varela, who along with two fellow businessmen gave Nuru a $40,000 tractor and accessories to do work on his ranch, was sentenced to two years in prison.

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The San Francisco 49ers are rumored to be moving on from quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. Garoppolo’s tenure in San Francisco has largely been a successful one, as the veteran signal-caller led the team to one Super Bowl and nearly had them on the brink of another berth to the big game this year. That level of success certainly warrants a certain level of respect, which this ex-49ers coach believes that Garoppolo deserves, per Yahoo Sports.

“I think they should throw a party for Jimmy and say thank you, because you know what, he gave them a lot of wins. There were times where people were rough on him… but you know what, he played pretty darn well overall. He’ll land on his feet someplace else and he’ll start someplace else, you watch. And then it’ll be Trey Lance’s turn.”

Former 49ers coach Steve Mariucci believes that the franchise should “say thank you” to Jimmy Garoppolo, who gave them “a lot of wins.” Mariucci’s take is similar to one out forth by Garoppolo’s own teammate, Deebo Samuel.

Mariucci said that the 49ers quarterback, who was paid to win, has done that about as well as any of the top quarterbacks in the league. Garoppolo, whose career record is 33-14, “will land on his feet” as a starter someplace else, according to Mariucci.

For all of the criticism that Garoppolo has taken, he has done a solid job of leading the team to victories, both in the regular season and the postseason.

With several contending teams in the market for a quarterback, Garoppolo could end up making Mariucci look like a prophet.

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