2 Indicted on Bribery Counts

Two Orange County men were indicted Wednesday on federal charges of taking more than $7,600 in bribes from the operator of a security business while they were deputy marshals in the federal courthouse in Los Angeles.

Joseph Gieniec, 43, of Santa Ana, who transferred out of the U.S. Marshals Service in 1986, and Gordon Tornberg, 59, of Tustin, who continues to work for that office, were accused of accepting gratuities in 1984 from Joseph Rydzewski, who owned a Santa Ana company that supplied security guard services to the marshals.

Rydzewski, 33, of Santa Ana, was charged with paying illegal gratuities to Gieniec in 1984, and to Eugene Howell, who was a deputy marshal in 1986. Howell was not indicted.

The federal grand jury indictment does not detail what the defendants did in exchange for the bribes, except to say that the payments, most of them by check, were made “because of official acts performed or to be performed.”

The indictment said Tornberg supervised seizures of property sought by the U.S. attorney’s office. Gieniec often used personnel from Rydzewski’s company, Lyons International Security, in those seizures and Tornberg reviewed and approved Lyons’ billings, the indictment said.