The Lawyer and The General Manager
How an ideas guy from New York parlayed his connections into multi-million dollar contracts with the biggest public utility in the country
Like most corruption, it played out in mundane ways: A hotel meeting in Riverside, the windswept asshole of Southern California. There, a deal was struck between two men. One of them was The Lawyer, an utterly normal looking guy named Paul Paradis, who was working for the city of LA. The Lawyer seemed as if the biggest rush he ever got in his whole life was that one time he filed his taxes three months early.
The other man was The General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, the largest public utility in the country. You know the mysterious co-worker in The Machinist? That’s kinda what he looks like. Although The General Manager of DWP is not named by the government, the timeline described by federal prosecutors occurred when David Wright was general manager. Both men pleaded the 5th Amendment Against Self-Incrimination when asked about the matter. Let’s still call him The General Manager. Well, the General Manager eventually quit his job.
A newly released federal plea agreement pertaining to messy LADWP litigation has shed light as to the scope of what went down during this union. And it sounds like so many other other dumb tales of compromised public officials in LA these days: high-end cars, trips overseas, and the allure of individual wealth over the collective good.
The plea agreement also lays out how The Lawyer parlayed his work for the city attorney’s office into multi-million dollar DWP contracts with the help of The General Manager. The government' documents charge that between February 2017 and March 2019, The Lawyer bribed The General Manager!
By the time the hotel meeting between The Lawyer and The General Manager took place in February 2017, according to the government, The Lawyer had gained a lot of institutional knowledge about DWP. The two formed a close relationship, going to social events, music concerts and frequenting ruling class dining establishments, according to federal prosecutors. They said The Lawyer regularly paid for things with his lawyer money.
But a problem arose, or maybe one was created. It’s unclear. Cyber security vulnerabilities were apparently discovered at DWP, and the two talked about expanding The Lawyer’s work to include cyber security services. The DWP board had already agreed to pay The Lawyer’s firm $6 million for remediation work related to the billing system. But it was decided a different entity would have to be formed because The Lawyer’s firm could not ethically do the work. So a company was formed: Aventador Utility Solutions, because really cool cars meant a lot to The Lawyer.
"PARADIS and LADWP General Manager discussed ways
that LADWP General Manager could benefit financially from Aventador," according to the federal documents.
So The Lawyer and the General Manager discussed how The Lawyer’s company would secure a $30 million no-bid contract, according to the government. In exchange, the General Manager, upon leaving DWP, would become Aventador CEO, pulling in an annual $1 million salary, according to the government. And his new company car at LADWP would be a new Mercedes SL 550, prosecutors said. A Mercedes for a government car. Very low key.
A month later, Aventador became officially became a company. Its business address was listed as an oceanside Santa Monica condo lol.
Blanket Approval
The next step was to secure approval of the contract by the five-member DWP board, prosecutors said. During this time, The Lawyer was making friends, like The Independent Monitor, who was in charge of making sure the DWP billing settlement was going well. The Independent Monitor was wined and dined by The Lawyer, according to the government, taking him to sporting events and dinner. No one really enjoyed any of it. The government said the Lawyer would ghost-write reports about the progress of the settlement to make it look like things were going well.
And the government said The Lawyer drafted another Independent Monitor report which The General Manager used to get the Aventador contract approved before the DWP board. The gist of the report said DWP’s Information Technology Department was understaffed and unqualified to handle big projects, thus it needed an outside vendor, said prosecutors. It also said the DWP settlement could not be satisfied without Aventador. Also, The Lawyer and The General Manager didn’t mention some things to the board, like:
“LADWP General Manager never disclosed to the LADWP Board that he had agreed to accept from defendant PARADIS the title of Aventador’s CEO, an annual salary of approximately $1,000,000, and a luxury company Mercedes in exchange for his support of the Aventador contract,” said federal prosecutors. But then came The Board Member, who although initially was onboard with the contract, changed his mind leading up to the June 2017 vote, according to prosecutors. The Board Member, who is unnamed in government documents, was soon in touch with The Lawyer and asked for a little help on an unrelated court matter, according to the government. He was, after all, The Lawyer!
Just prior to the vote, The Board Member reportedly said to The Lawyer, “You take care of me, I take care of you,” according to the government lol.
“PARADIS understood LADWP Board Member to mean that LADWP Board Member would vote in favor of the Aventador contract if defendant PARADIS continued to provide LADWP Board Member with unpaid legal services and assistance,” said federal prosecutors. The vote passed unanimously on June 6, 2017. Those members who voted for the contract included Mel Levine, the former Democratic Congressman, William Funderburk Jr., Jill Bans Barad, Christina Noonan, and Aura Vasquez. They love voting for things.
The government went on to allege that The Board Member kept communicating with The Lawyer, and that the General Manager urged The Lawyer to help The Board Member so they could have his ongoing support. The government said The Lawyer did about $30,000 worth of legal work for The Board Member, and didn’t ask for any payment! The Board Member has not been charged with any crimes.
The General Manager said The Board Member, who at one point is described as a male in government documents, was at the time recently re-appointed to a new term, according to the government.
William Funderburk Jr., an environmental lawyer, was reappointed to the board by Mayor Eric Garcetti around that time. No other board member was up for an appointment that year. Funderburk, who has not been charged, did not respond to my request for comment.
A Bromance Goes Global
But the relationship between The Lawyer and The General Manager kept getting more ambitious!! It appeared that they really loved doing business together. In May 2018, prosecutors said The Lawyer and The General Manager went on a trip to Israel to meet with a global company that trains governments and businesses on cyber security. There, the two entered into an agreement in which The Lawyer agreed to throw up $5 million in order to open a cyber company in Los Angeles, which would provide training to LADWP employees. Both The Lawyer and The General Manager would have an interest in the company. According to prosecutors, the General Manager said DWP would spend $15 million on cyber security training.
“LADWP General Manager did not have the formal authority to make this commitment on behalf of LADWP without action by the LADWP board,” The government said.They went on to say that both The Lawyer and The General Manager knew the business move would benefit them both financially, and that The General Manager would use his position of power to influence the board in approving it.
But the weird Israeli company, which the LA Times reported as being Cybergym, never happened despite a planned opening in 2019. And after news of the no-bid contracts were made public by me and the LA Times, the $30 million Aventador contract was canceled, but only after $22 million was already paid out. The Lawyer and the city are currently fighting this all out in court.
Anyway, The Lawyer has agreed with prosecutors to plead guilty to taking a $2.1 million bribe for his role in colluding with opposing counsel in the DWP ratepayer lawsuit. He will face up to 10 years in jail for the bribery plea. According to the government, he essentially deprived thousands of incorrectly billed DWP customers of fair legal representation, with help from high-level officials in the office of City Attorney Mike Feuer. He also will admit to bribing The General Manager and The Board Member. The Lawyer has also filed for bankruptcy.
The General Manager has not been charged with any crimes. The investigation, as they say, is ongoing.
