MICHIGAN
A federal grand jury Tuesday indicted the former chief executive officer of FutureNet Group Inc., a Detroit-based information technology company, for his role in a scheme to bribe an official from the City of Detroit, according to officials.
Parimal D. Mehta, 54, of Northville, Michigan, allegedly tried to get benefits for Future Net.
Mehta is named in an 11-count indictment filed in federal court in Michigan with five counts of honest services mail and wire fraud, one count of federal program bribery, and five counts of unlawfully using interstate facilities to commit bribery, officials said.
According to the indictment, from 2009 through August 2016, Mehta made multiple cash payments to Charles L. Dodd, the former Director of Detroit’s Office of Departmental Technology Services, including two cash bribes hand-delivered by Mehta to Dodd in the restrooms of Detroit-area restaurants in 2016.
Mehta is also alleged to have employed Dodd’s family members at FutureNet and its subsidiaries.
Dodd previously pleaded guilty to bribery on Sept. 27, 2016.
The indictment alleges that Mehta paid these bribes to Dodd in exchange for preferential treatment for his company, FutureNet, which received approximately $7.5 million from Detroit in 2015 and 2016.
According to the indictment, Mehta and FutureNet benefitted from Dodd’s influence over the administration of city contracts, expenditures under those contracts, and the hiring and selection of contract personnel.
The indictment further alleges that Mehta obtained confidential information about Detroit’s internal budgets for specific technology projects.
According to Crain’s Detroit Business, “Perry Mehta came to the U.S. in 1989 with a desire to do more than the civil engineering job he’d held with the state of Gujarat in India.”
“As a civil engineer, working for a state government, I was not able to utilize even 5 percent of … (my) entrepreneurial drive,” Mehta told the Detroit Business. “I decided the land of opportunity was the United States of America.”
Detroit Business: “Mehta, 50, attended the University of New Haven in Connecticut, adding a master’s degree in environmental engineering to the bachelor’s degree in civil engineering he’d earned in India.”
The defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
The case is being investigated by the FBI’s Detroit Division.
Trial Attorneys Robert J. Heberle and James I. Pearce of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section are prosecuting the case.