A second ex-official has pleaded guilty in the sex, drugs and bid-rigging scandal at the U.S. Interior Department for helping a friend and former colleague win a million-dollar federal contract.
Milton Dial, 60, of Las Vegas, admitted in federal court earlier this week that he traded favors for friends while working as a deputy associate director of the Denver-based program that collects royalties from private companies drilling on federal sites.
Dial had resigned from his $142,500-a-year job in 2005 after Interior Department Inspector General Earl E. Devaney began an investigation of the Minerals Management Service that uncovered illicit drug use, inappropriate sexual encounters and widespread acceptance of gifts from the oil industry.
In federal court in Nevada on Monday, Dial admitted he worked with former colleague, Jimmy Mayberry, to help Mayberry’s consulting company win a million-dollar contract from the agency in 2003. Two years later, Dial quit his government job and went to work for Mayberry, earning $122,000 from the contract he’d drawn up, according to ProPublica. Dial’s role violated restrictions on former employees of the executive branch.
Mayberry, 65, pleaded guilty in July to violating conflict-of-interest laws. Both men face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Those two prosecutions are the only criminal charges to emerge so far from the investigation of the Minerals Management Service
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
0 Comments
There are no comments yet, be the first by filling in the form below.
Leave a Comment