Former LADWP cybersecurity chief will get 4 years in jail

A federal choose on Tuesday sentenced the previous official accountable for cybersecurity on the Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy to 4 years in jail for mendacity to federal authorities.

David Alexander, 54, is the second metropolis official to be sentenced within the federal corruption probe of the DWP and town lawyer’s workplace. DWP officers and attorneys working for town took half in varied crimes, together with aiding and abetting extortion and bribery, in response to prosecutors.

David Wright, the previous DWP basic supervisor, was sentenced in April to 6 years in jail for bribery.

U.S. District Choose Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. instructed the court docket Tuesday that Alexander lied and coated up his actions on the utility “with nice ease.”

“He was half and parcel of the tradition of corruption on the DWP,” Blumenfeld mentioned.

Alexander, who was additionally ordered by Blumenfeld to pay a $50,000 wonderful, declined to remark to The Occasions after his sentencing.

Prosecutors mentioned Alexander helped an organization related to Paul Paradis, a New York lawyer who additionally has been implicated within the sprawling corruption scheme, safe work on the utility. Later, Alexander sought out a job for himself with Paradis’ firm as he ready to depart the DWP, prosecutors mentioned.

Alexander served because the DWP’s chief data safety officer from Could 2017 to February 2019, then as cyber threat officer till August 2019.

Prosecutors mentioned he used his place on the Southern California Public Energy Authority, a consortium of utilities, together with the DWP, to rig the bidding course of in favor of a contract for Paradis’ firm.

Alexander was the vice chair of the SCPPA cybersecurity working group and a member of the scoring committee. He each influenced the composition of the scoring committee and shared his scores with different members to steer them to fee Paradis’ firm favorably. In April 2019, the corporate was awarded a $17-million contract.

The DWP board later sought to rebid the contract by way of the utility. Alexander once more undertook efforts to affect different members of the analysis committee to fee Paradis’ firm favorably. He despatched Paradis a textual content about his plans to get the contract by way of, writing, “I do know my job” with a laughing-crying emoji, prosecutors mentioned.

In mid-July 2019, Alexander “proactively solicited employment” with the cybersecurity firm. He sought from Paradis an executive-level wage, sign-on bonus and extra monetary incentives to make up for the “early retirement penalty” he confronted for leaving the DWP, prosecutors mentioned.

By that time, Paradis was covertly working with the FBI and recording his conversations with Alexander, in response to transcripts within the court docket submitting.

The FBI raided the DWP on July 22, 2019. Alexander gave a voluntary interview to the FBI two days later wherein he lied to investigators about his conversations and settlement with Paradis. Throughout a second interview two days later, he lied once more and falsely acknowledged that he had declined any job alternatives with Paradis’ firm, prosecutors mentioned.

At Tuesday’s sentencing, Alexander’s lawyer Nina Marino highlighted the timeline laid out by prosecutors in a bid to forged doubt on her consumer’s motivations. Earlier than July 2019, Alexander’s “self-interest wasn’t the motivating issue,” Marino instructed the choose. Blumenfeld rejected that argument, saying the concept Alexander was doing something different “than setting the desk” wasn’t believable.

Blumenfeld famous that the previous DWP official was entrusted with safeguarding safety on the utility.

“The extent of betrayal of that belief is nearly unfathomable,” he mentioned.