A Beverly Hills developer who bribed a Los Angeles County official to steer a public agency into a lease for commercial space is an example of “systemic corruption” in Southern California, according to the federal judge who handed down a sentence of four years in prison and a $1.1 million fine.
Arman Gabaee and his high-powered attorney, Robert Shapiro, had hoped to get 18 months of home confinement instead of prison time, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Gabaee’s sentence followed his guilty plea in May on a charge of bribing Thomas J. Shepos, a Los Angeles County employee, to use his influence over various leases.
A string of bribes—including ongoing payments of $1,000 a month, according to prosecutors–eventually led to an offer of a $1 million home to Shepos for steering a lease deal valued at $45 million to a blighted mall Gabaee owned in the South Bay city of Hawthorne.
Gabaee was convicted on a single count of bribery, and U.S. District Judge George H. Wu cut back on prosecutors’ request for a nine-year sentence. Wu maintained the fine at $1.1 million, citing systemic corruption as one reason.
“There is so much of it going around,” the judge said.
Prosecutors claimed that FBI wiretaps revealed more instances of Gabaee, who founded Hollywood-based Charles Co., seeking to pay to influence a public official.
“This was just a minuscule sampling of how this defendant does business,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Greer Dotson told the court, according to the L.A. Times report.
“I don’t know if I can go quite that far,” Wu responded.
Shepos served as a senior official in the real estate division of the County of Los Angeles, with responsibilities for negotiating leases.
The leases examined in the case against Shepos were subject to approval by the L.A, County Board of Supervisors, a governing body of five elected officials.
Shepos started cooperating with FBI agents in 2016, and eventually began secretly recording meetings with Gabaee. One meeting captured audio of Gabaee offering to buy Shepos a million-dollar house in the wine country north of San Francisco in exchange for a 10-year lease of a substantial chunk of space at his Hawthorne Mall property—which became the center of the government’s case.
Gabaee then looked to cash in on the property, claiming a long-term lease with a government agency would boost the property’s from $17 million to $500 million, according to prosecutors.
– Jerry Sullivan
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