Former government contractor, 66, gets 70 months for bribing Schofield contracting officials

A 66-year-old former government contractor was sentenced Friday to 70 months’ imprisonment for his role in a bribery and kickback scheme to secure contracts with the Army.

Chief Judge J. Michael Seabright sentenced John Winslett of Rhode Island to five years and 10 months, followed by three years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Hawaii and several other agencies involved announced Friday in a news release.

Court records show Winslett received a sentence of 70 months for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 60 months for conspiracy to accept kickbacks, which are to run together. He was also fined $150,000.

Winslett admitted to paying bribes of over $100,000 from 2011 to 2018 to two Army contracting officials who worked at the Range Division at Schofield Barracks, according to court documents and information presented in court.

The bribes included cash; automobiles, including a new Jeep Rubicon; and firearms, including a custom rifle.

In exchange, Winslett’s employer, described in charging documents only as Company A, a Virginia corporation, received numerous federal contracts worth at least $19 million.

Winslett is principal owner of Pacific Construction Consultant Ltd., a Nevada corporation formed and registered Dec. 1, 2009, according to the charging document.

Winslett also admitted to accepting kickbacks totaling $723,333.33 from a local subcontractor for assigning the contracts to him.

The 66-year-old was initially charged Sept. 5, 2019, and entered into a plea agreement Sept. 26, 2019.

The charging court document alleges Winslett would, directly or indirectly, corruptly give, offer and promise things of value to the two Army officials. In exchange they would recommend the Army use contract vehicles that Winslett and the two officials knew would make it more likely that the contracts would be awarded to Company A, which did occur.

The document names the two Army employees involved in the conspiracy. The first was Victor Garo, supervisory range officer, who recommended contract vehicles for the Army to use to meet its contracting requirements at the Range Division.

The second was Franklin Raby, range operations manager at the Range Division and an employee of the Army and Department of Defense. He retired in or about May 2018 after accepting a job as a program manager for Company A.

The charging document did not name the Oahu- based general contracting business, which was one of Company A’s primary subcontractors.

Some documents remain sealed.

Seabright accepted Winslett’s guilty plea on Oct. 15, 2019. Sentencing had been set for Jan. 16, 2020, but was continued a few times until Friday.

Winslett is to self-surrender by July 5 to the prison designated by the Bureau of Prisons.

Army Criminal Investigation Command, U.S. Defense Criminal Investigative Serv-ice and the FBI investigated this case.

The case was prosecuted by Laura Connelly and Justin Weitz of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Wallenstein.