The Washington Post reports “A Rockville IT company owner who prosecutors say paid tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to a U.S. Postal Service official for information to help his firm win lucrative government contracts was sentenced to a year and a day in prison” :

A Rockville IT company owner who prosecutors say paid tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to a U.S. Postal Service official for information to help his firm win lucrative government contracts was sentenced to a year and a day in prison Friday, authorities said.

Federal prosecutors had asked that Adel Elaraby, 40, owner of a Rockville-based company called AH Computer Consulting Inc., be sentenced to two years and three months in prison for bribing the official. They wrote in court filings that he paid the official, Gene Quarles, $40,000 from April 2010 to June 2012. In exchange, prosecutors wrote, Quarles gave Elaraby confidential information about government contracts and even let him listen in surreptitiously on conference calls between Postal Service officials.

Quarles was sentenced in May of this year to 18 months in prison for taking at least $40K in bribes

From The US Attorneys Office :

AH Computer Consulting, Inc. (AH, Inc.), an international information technology consulting firm based in Rockville, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to having paid thousands of dollars in bribes to Gene Quarles, a former official with the United States Postal Service, in exchange for Quarles’ official assistance in obtaining and facilitating government contracts for that company.  The company’s CEO-Managing Director, Heba Elaraby, 42, of Gaithersburg, Md., also admitted to having paid bribes and entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with the United States earlier today.  The company’s CEO-Technical Director, Adel Elaraby, 45, of Gaithersburg, Md., pleaded guilty to the same offense on April 19, 2013.

In a statement of facts filed with their plea agreements, both AH, Inc. and Adel Elaraby admitted that, in April 2010, the Elarabys approached Quarles and offered to pay him bribes in exchange for various impermissible contracting preferences and advantages. Quarles accepted this offer, and from in or about April 2010 through in or about June 2012, AHCC employees paid Quarles numerous cash payments—totaling several thousands of dollars—in exchange for Quarles’ providing advantages to AHCC during the USPS contracting process. For example, Quarles provided AHCC with confidential USPS contracting information, so that AHCC could tailor its bids to what other potential contractors were bidding. In addition, Quarles forwarded various private call-in numbers for conference calls between USPS officials, where official business was discussed, so that AHCC employees could anonymously listen in and get a leg-up on their competition. Quarles also allowed AHCC employees to complete surveys, evaluations, and other review materials in Quarles’ own name so that AHCC could obtain additional government contracts.

Read more: IT contractor sentenced to 1 year for bribing Postal Service official – The Washington Post.