Ex-Sperry Executive Pleads Guilty to Bribery in Defense Fraud Case

A former Sperry Corp. marketing executive pleaded guilty Friday to initiating a bribery scheme in which a Navy official was paid $400,000 to help the company compete for an electronics contract.

Frank J. Lavelle, 68, who was marketing director at the company’s Clearwater, Fla., facility, faces a possible 20-year prison sentence for participating in the scheme, which included other executives of Sperry.

Sperry became part of Unisys Corp. after a 1986 merger with Burroughs Corp.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton scheduled Lavelle’s sentencing for Jan. 12.

Lavelle entered his guilty plea in U.S. District Court on the same day that Dennis Mitchell, a former Unisys marketing executive, was sentenced to a 90-day term in a halfway house for arranging $4,000 worth of illegal corporate campaign donations to several congressmen.

The guilty plea was the latest in a series of more than 20 convictions of defense consultants, corporate executives and Pentagon employees stemming from the Justice Department’s investigation of defense procurement fraud, code-named Operation Ill Wind.

Lavelle admitted that he had introduced Garland Tomlin Jr., a former Navy procurement official, to Sperry Vice President Charles F. Gardner, saying that Tomlin wanted a “nest egg” for his eventual retirement from the government.

Tomlin, 59, already has pleaded guilty to receiving $400,000 from Sperry in 1983 and 1984 and $75,000 from Honeywell Inc. in exchange for bid information on a multimillion-dollar maintenance contract on the electronic components of Navy weapons.

Sperry was eliminated from competition for the contract even though Tomlin wrote reports favoring the company’s proposal and promoted the bid with other Navy officials.

Gardner, 59, who was vice president in charge of Sperry’s surveillance and fire control systems unit in Great Neck, N.Y., was sentenced on Sept. 15 to 32 months in federal prison for his role in a separate bribery scheme.