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<\/p>\nSacramento, CA…California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the sentencing of Alex Morales III, a former California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) employee who received payment in exchange for awarding contracts for projects that required some form of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. Morales pleaded guilty in December to two counts of felony bribery and was sentenced today to four years in prison, which is suspended pending successful completion of a two-year probation term. The terms of probation include one year of home detention with electronic monitoring and monthly $500 restitution payments to Caltrans. Morales will also forfeit any CalPERS benefits he accrued between August 2010 and January 2015, when the crimes were committed.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhen you violate the public\u2019s trust, you will be held accountable,\u201d\u00a0said Attorney General Becerra.\u00a0\u201cAs public servants, we are held to a higher standard. There is no place for this kind of criminal behavior in our state or state government. At the California Department of Justice, we\u2019re always ready to go to bat for the people of California.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morales was employed as an ADA coordinator for Caltrans, a role which involves making Caltrans systems, including bridges and public walkways, ADA compliant. The California Department of Justice\u00a0arrested Morales in 2015<\/a>\u00a0after a nine-month investigation.\u00a0Following a preliminary hearing in 2017, a judge held Morales to answer on 39 counts of bribery.\u00a0At trial\u00a0in 2019, the jury acquitted Morales on two counts and deadlocked on the remaining counts. A new trial was scheduled for 2021, but Morales\u00a0pleaded\u00a0guilty in December 2020 to accepting\u00a0multiple\u00a0bribes over the course of approximately five years. The bribes were made in cash payments ranging from $1,875 to $12,000 and included the acceptance of a new white Ford Expedition.<\/p>\n Attorney General Becerra is committed to protecting California\u2019s laws and combatting criminal activity across the state. This month, the Attorney General\u00a0announced the sentencing of Donnelly Montenegro<\/a>,\u00a0former acting Chief Operating Officer\u00a0of the AIDS Research Alliance (ARA) for grand theft for falsely portraying himself as an acting ARA staff member in order to steal $316,000 from a donor\u2019s estate. Attorney General Becerra also announced the\u00a0arraignment of Tamur Rajput<\/a>\u00a0for alleged money laundering and filing false tax returns in connection with a tobacco smuggling scheme. In November 2020, the Attorney General\u00a0announced the arrest and arraignment<\/a>\u00a0of nine individuals on 136 felony counts for allegedly operating an advance fee mortgage relief scam that claimed to prevent the foreclosure of properties throughout Southern California. Last August, Attorney General Becerra\u00a0announced\u00a0the arraignment and\u00a0charges<\/a>\u00a0against Eric Nguyen and Khan \u201cTina\u201d Tran, who were charged in connection with an alleged gambling scheme that resulted in the theft of approximately $4 million from the\u00a0580 Casino in Livermore. In July 2020, the Attorney General announced\u00a0arrests\u00a0and filing of charges<\/a>\u00a0against Christopher Mancuso, John Black, and Joseph Tufo for allegedly operating a multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme that targeted\u00a0more than 70 victims around the world.<\/p>\n A copy of the Plea Agreement is\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and a copy of the First Amended Information is\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sacramento, CA…California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the sentencing of Alex Morales III, a former California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) employee who received payment in exchange for awarding contracts for projects that required some form of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. Morales pleaded guilty in December to two counts of felony bribery and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-law-enforcement","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/cadoj.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/82791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n\n# # #<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"