attorney will plead guilty for pocketing $2M bribe in LADWP saga

Paul Paradis, who finessed one hell of a lawsuit, has copped a plea deal and is cooperating with federal prosecutors.

For those of us binging banal LA government corruption, the content keeps on comin’: One of the central figures in the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power saga has agreed to plead guilty to taking nearly $2.2 million in bribes related to a sham lawsuit against the city, federal prosecutors announced Monday evening.

Paul Paradis, who has been living in Arizona while going through bankruptcy proceedings, agreed to plead guilty to a single count of bribery, the government said. Paradis is cooperating with the federal criminal investigation, according to the government.

The bribe came from Paradis’ opponent in a $67 million utility billing case, whom Paradis handpicked, prosecutors said. The federal government only described him as “Ohio attorney,” but he is widely believed to be Jack Landskroner. Landskroner made $10 million in the case in which the government said Paradis did all the work. He died earlier this year.

According to the government, Paradis told Landskroner that the city wanted the lawsuit “pre-settled” on the city’s desired terms, and that Paradis would do all or most of Landskroner’s substantive work on the case. In exchange, Paradis and Landskroner agreed that Paradis would receive 20 percent of Landskroner’s fees in the Jones v. City case as a kickback. The lead plaintiff in the case is Antwon Jones.

“Ohio Attorney then secretly paid $2,175,000 to Paradis, disguising the kickback as a real estate investment, and funneling it through shell companies that Paradis and Ohio Attorney had set up exclusively for the purpose of transmitting and concealing the illicit payment,” according to prosecutors.

“The investigation is ongoing,” said Ciaran McEvoy, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California.

Paradis was one of two special counsel hired by City Attorney Mike Feuer’s office to defend lawsuits by utility customers over incorrect bills. The case eventually settled for $67 million, but cracks in the settlement emerged when it was revealed the underlying lawsuit and subsequent settlement were drafted by Paradis. Federal prosecutors are describing it as a “collusive lawsuit.”

Attorneys fees in the LADWP case ballooned to $19 million over time, with Landskroner taking home the lion’s share at $10.3 million. Although a recent court-appointed investigation cast Feuer’s office in a bad light, saying high-ranking officials “all knew most or all of this three-part plan,” what remained to be seen was the paper trail.

The government’s investigation revealed new details regarding Paradis’ company Aventador Utility Solutions, which secured over $30 million in no-bid city contracts to purportedly fix the billing problem despite having no IT experience. Paradis got those contracts by bribing other high-ranking officials, which the government described as an “LADWP manager” and “board member.”

In 2019, DWP General Manager David Wright pleaded the 5th Amendment Against Self-Incrimination and then resigned from his job after being questioned about kickbacks regarding the case. Landskroner and Paradis also both pleaded the 5th.

The government went on to say that part of the reason why the Paradis contract was awarded was because the LADWP Board was not informed that Paradis had ghostwritten a report on the Jones v. City settlement on which LADWP based its decision to grant the contract. The Paradis-written report claimed that LADWP could not meet its obligations under the Jones v. City settlement agreement unless it contracted with Aventador.

“The LADWP Board also was unaware that the then-LADWP general manager advocating for the award of the $30 million no-bid contract to Paradis’s company had secretly agreed to become its CEO with an annual salary of $1 million and a luxury company car.”

For a while, Aventador, the name of a high-end Lamborghini, listed an oceanside Santa Monica condo as its office.

The collusive Jones lawsuit was the result of the initial plan falling through. Plan A was to get all the lawyers suing DWP to drop their suits and join in on a collective lawsuit against consulting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers, which advised the city on new billing system’s rollout.

“Mr. Feuer, Mr. Clark, and Mr. Peters approved of the plan, as did Mr. (Mel) Levine,” according to a nearly 600-page court-appointed special master’s report released earlier this year.

But that plan fell through due to conflicts, setting the stage for the Jones lawsuit, which would be settled on the city’s terms, the government said. The government said Paradis used “nonpublic information provided to him by members of the City Attorney’s Office and LADWP” to draft a detailed complaint for a class-action lawsuit against the city with Jones as the named class representative.

So to put it into perspective: the city of LA deprived those suing LADWP of an attorney.

The question of who greenlit the sham lawsuit still remains. Special counsel said it was done at highest levels of the City Attorney’s office, while Feuer’s office said special counsel cooked up the scheme independently. The government said Kiesel is not charged with a crime and is cooperating with the investigation.

One line in the government’s announcement said that in the run-up to the lawsuit, “at least one senior member of the City Attorney’s office” met with special counsel Paradis and Kiesel, who “were authorized and directed to find counsel that would be friendly to the city to supposedly represent Jones in a class-action lawsuit against the city.”

"I am beyond outraged that anyone would breach their duties to the public we serve, as this plea agreement reflects," said Feuer in a statement. “As public servants, integrity must be our watchword, our guiding principle. At the end of the day, that’s all we have. We can have no tolerance for betraying the public trust."

“This is not good news for Mike Feuer. It is an indictment of the entire LA city attorney’s office,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog.

Paradis is expected to make his initial court appearance in the coming weeks.