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Ex-Official of Government Sentenced for Taking Bribes

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Tim Mcglone, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Jun. 20--NORFOLK -- A former government official who admitted accepting gifts in return for awarding contracts to a freight shipping company was sentenced Monday to a year in prison and ordered to help repay the government $84,000.

Allison R. Broda, 45, of Suffolk stood before a federal judge weeping as she apologized to her family for becoming involved in the scheme. "I hope you will be able to forgive me," she said.

For four years, until 2004, Broda, who approved government freight shipping contracts at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, accepted almost $10,000 in cash and gifts, a prosecutor said. In turn, she provided no-bid contracts to Air Cargo Expediters Inc., a Beach company and a subsidiary of AIT Worldwide Logistics Inc.

Former Air Cargo employee Theresa Stranigan was sentenced June 6 to five months of house arrest and five years of probation. Stranigan and Broda will share in the repayment of the $84,000, which represents the amount the government estimated it was overbilled by Air Cargo.

U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Friedman said he gave Broda a stiffer sentence than Stranigan because of her role as a government official.

"It's very serious," the judge said. Of the defendants who provided the gifts, he added, "they weren't government officials. They weren't in a position of trust."

Broda, who pleaded guilty to receiving illegal gratuities, admitted in court that she accepted from Stranigan lunches and dinners, tickets to shows starring Alan Jackson and Gretchen Wilson and to NASCAR races, weekends at Outer Banks resorts, spa treatments, clothing and jewelry.

Broda, in turn, approved Air Cargo contracts to ship Navy supplies to and from the Chesapeake SPAWAR complex .

Air Cargo received about $717,000 in freight transport contracts from the warfare center from 2001 to 2004, according to court records. Before April 2001, Air Cargo received virtually no SPAWAR contracts, the records say.

Broda becomes the seventh of eight individuals convicted and sentenced in an ongoing probe of payola involving military freight shipments. The investigation is continuing.

The eighth individual, Anita F. Crutchfield, another former government contract official, pleaded guilty to accepting gratuities and is scheduled for sentencing Monday.

* Reach Tim McGlone at (757) 446-2343 or tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Virginian-Pilot

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