LOS ANGELES
A former contractor at a food supply company agreed to plead guilty to a felony bid-rigging charge, federal officials announced Tuesday.
He admitted that he conspired with a person at another food company to determine which supplier would obtain low-bid contracts from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP), officials stated.
Edgar Porras, 49, of Moreno Valley, was charged in a criminal information filed today with one count of bid-rigging.
In a plea agreement also filed Tuesday, Porras agreed to plead guilty to the offense.
During the scheme that ran from 2013 through August 2018, Porras conspired “to suppress and restrain competition by rigging bids to obtain selected food contracts offered by the BOP,” according to court documents.
Also, Porras, who was a contractor to a food company identified as “Company A,” agreed with co-conspirators not to compete to obtain the BOP contracts, and collectively they decided which conspirator would submit the lowest – and presumably winning – bid for a contact.
Porras admitted in his plea agreement that he rigged the bidding process for about 111 BOP food contracts cumulatively worth approximately $1.9 million.
Porras agreed to plead guilty to violating a provision of the Sherman Antitrust Act. It carries a statutory maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.
The fine may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by the victims of the crime if either of those amounts is greater than the statutory maximum fine.
In November 2019, the Department of Justice created the PCSF, a joint law enforcement effort to combat antitrust crimes and related fraudulent schemes that impact government procurement, grant, and program funding at the federal, state, and local levels.
In the fall of 2020, the Strike Force expanded its footprint with the launch of PCSF: Global, which is designed to deter, detect, investigate, and prosecute collusive schemes that target government spending outside of the United States.