Former Official Gets 2 Years in Corruption Case

A former elected member of a Los Angeles-area water district board was sentenced to two years in prison Monday for soliciting and laundering a $25,000 bribe.

Tyrone Smith, 47, of Ladera Heights is one of a dozen people who has been convicted in what began three years ago as an FBI investigation of municipal corruption in Carson.

Smith was a board member of the Carson-based West Basin Municipal Water District, a little-known public agency that has a $100-million annual budget and serves nearly 1 million residents in southwest Los Angeles County and other areas.

In 2003, Smith pleaded guilty to one count of extortion and six counts of money laundering in connection with his vote in the award of a debt-restructuring contract to a New York financial services firm.

Smith admitted demanding and receiving a $25,000 bribe from a representative of M.R. Beal & Co. of New York in return for steering the debt-restructuring contract to Beal’s partner in the deal, Rice Financial Products Co., also of New York.

At a court hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Nora Manella rejected a defense request for six months of home detention, saying that such a sentence would send the wrong message to other public officials who might be tempted to betray the public’s trust. Manella also ordered Smith to pay $25,000 restitution to the water district and placed him under three years of supervision after he leaves prison.

Two weeks ago, R. Keith McDonald, the water board’s former president and son of Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson), was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison after his conviction on corruption charges. The congresswoman was not implicated in the case.

A federal jury found McDonald guilty of taking $30,000 in kickbacks in exchange for the award of a multimillion-dollar pipeline contract and of funneling $15,000 in kickbacks to three Carson City Council members in exchange for their votes on a municipal bus contract.