Federal prosecutors said they've unraveled a bribery scheme involving San Diego Navy officials and defense contractors.
Dawnell Parker, a former Navy civilian employee at the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, pleaded guilty Thursday in a San Diego federal courtroom to bribery charges, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release. Parker admitted to accepting thousands of dollars in free meals in exchange for helping them win and maintain contracts worth millions.
Court documents showed Parker worked at NAVWAR — named "SPAWAR" at the time — from 2009 to 2019. In 2016, Parker and her supervisor began helping one Virginia-based contractor win and maintain several contracts.
The contracts were awarded under a Small Business Administration program designed to help small business owners from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds compete for government contracts.
Both the contractor and Parker's boss — an engineer and project lead — are referred to only as "co-conspirators" in court documents.
The U.S. Attorney's Officer declined to say whether they or anyone else has been charged in the scheme.
According to prosecutors, Parker and her boss were treated to several meals worth thousands of dollars in San Diego and Washington, D.C.
In addition to those meals, the CEO of the defense contractor also took Parker's boss as his guest to Game 5 of the 2018 World Series in Los Angeles and to Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta in 2019.
In exchange, Parker and her supervisor repeatedly gave the contractor glowing performance reviews and, in one case, gave others competing for a contract "poor" evaluations, court records showed.
It's the latest in a series of fraud cases involving the Navy.
The most notorious is the so-called "Fat Leonard" scandal in which scores of Navy officers were wined, dined and provided with prostitutes in exchange for helping Malaysian contractor Leonard Francis bilk the Navy for more than $30 million in ship husbanding services in the western Pacific.
More recently in San Diego, 10 people — including a Navy doctor, nurse and chief petty officer — pleaded guilty in a wide-ranging $2 million medical insurance fraud scheme. In March, Dr. Michael Villarroel, the Navy doctor involved, pleaded guilty to his role in the scheme. Christopher Toups, the former Navy chief involved, was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
