A Kennesaw consultant pleaded guilty Friday to participating in a $60,000 kickback scheme with a former high-ranking Atlanta Public Schools official.
Mahendra Patel, 45, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash and admitted to conspiring to bribe government officials and to committing mail and wire fraud. He is to be sentenced Nov. 1.
In May, Patel was indicted with Jerome Oberlton, who served as APS chief of information technology from 2004 to 2007. Oberlton resigned as chief of staff for the Dallas Independent School District shortly before being charged in Atlanta. He has pleaded not guilty.
During Friday’s hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Steinberg said that in January 2007 Oberlton issued a request for proposals for a data warehousing project intended to centralize the school system’s computer information so it could be easily accessed by APS employees.
Working with Patel, Oberlton devised a scheme in which the vendor bidding on the project submitted inflated hourly costs for its contractors, Steinberg said. Oberlton then made sure the vendor was awarded the contract as well as other work, all of which totaled more than $700,000, she said. Prosecutors have not identified the vendor, except to say it is a Detroit-based technology company.
Oberlton and Patel were then paid a percentage of the data warehousing contract by two unidentified employees of the vendor in a side deal, Steinberg said. This amounted to $60,000 in kickback payments given to two corporations Oberlton controlled — Global Technology Partners and Global Technology Services. APS did not know of or consent to these arrangements, Steinberg noted.
The kickbacks to Patel were disguised as sales commissions for nonexisting consulting work that he supposedly performed for Oberlton’s shell corporations, federal prosecutors have said. In reality, Patel acted as an intermediary who helped negotiate the kickbacks between Oberlton and the vendor and then signed fake sales consultant agreements to hide his role, prosecutors said.
Patel, who has a master’s in electrical engineering from Cleveland State University, and his lawyer, David West, declined to comment after the plea hearing.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Sally Yates said, “In a time when educational resources are scarce or often nonexistent, (Patel’s) fraud helped steer a lucrative computer contract to the highest bidder — one that was willing to line his pockets in exchange for work.” The case was investigated by both the FBI and IRS.
Steinberg said she would recommend that Patel receive credit for accepting responsibility and entering his plea early, saving government resources. Federal sentencing guidelines recommend Patel receive a prison term of 27 to 33 months, and Steinberg said she will ask that Patel be sentenced at the low end of that range.
About the Author
