Fugitive Businessman Sentenced to Prison for Fraud Scheme to Pay Alleged Kickbacks

MIAMI - Yesterday, Celestine "Skip" Aniekwu, 65, of Sunrise, Fla., who had been a fugitive for 15 years and surrendered earlier this year, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith to the top of the guidelines, 16 months in prison, for participating in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

According to the court filings in support of Aniekwu's plea in September of this year, undercover FBI agents posed as asset managers who offered to help Aniekwu obtain construction contracts with local governments entities in 2008. Aniekwu told the undercover FBI agents that he needed to pay a total of $150,000 in cash to public officials with the City of Miramar for supporting the bid of Gulf Building Corporation on two projects, the Ansin Sports Complex and the Miramar Regional Service Center, in Miramar, Fla. The money was to come from a sub-contractor as part of a pre-arranged deal. The subcontractor was a subsidiary of a publicly traded company and would have difficulty drawing out the amount of cash to finance the bribe payments. Aniekwu went to the undercover FBI agents requesting their assistance with a scheme for the subcontractor to provide false invoices for work that was never performed in order to obtain cash to allegedly pay the Miramar public officials. Aniekwu and an officer of the subcontractor conspired to prepare the fraudulent invoices and submit them and thereby obtained authorization to issue two checks totaling $50,000 which were provided to the undercover FBI agents. At the request of Aniekwu, the undercover FBI agents cashed the checks and provided the cash to Aniekwu, who was to use the funds to pay the public officials in Miramar.

U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida and Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey B. Veltri for the FBI, Miami Field Office, made the announcement.

The FBI investigated this matter. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey N. Kaplan.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at http://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov under case number 09-cr-60317.