Crooked NYC contractor gets jail time for accepting $500G in bribes
A corrupt New York City contractor whose job was to oversee critical sewer and water pipe repairs for homeowners was sentenced to 18 months in prison Monday after he was found guilty of accepting half a million dollars in bribes.
George Djurasevic, 54, pleaded guilty in September before a Brooklyn federal judge to taking the dirty money while he was contracted with the New York City Water Board between March 2016 and March 2021, according to the court for the Eastern District of New York.
The business where he worked, identified in lawsuits as the American Water Company Corporation, was awarded a massive multimillion dollar contract by the water board to sell warranties to city homeowners covering repairs in Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn.
Djurasevic, of Armonk, N.Y., was responsible for overseeing the company’s plumbing subcontractors.
Instead, he collected about $500,000 in bribes from a subcontractor in exchange for allowing them to inflate prices for services and not perform necessary utility tasks, federal prosecutors said.
He also took money to review plumbers’ determinations about what services were covered by the warranty.
“This defendant used his company’s contract with New York City as an opportunity to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and in exchange failed to properly oversee a subcontractor — permitting that entity to overbill and to fail to meet its obligations to the City and its residents,” Department of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber said in a statement.
On top of the prison sentence for taking bribes, Djurasevic will serve eight months for tax evasion as he failed to report his true income, which resulted in $114,000 in unpaid taxes.
He will also be forced to pay a fine of $482,000 in forfeiture before he undergoes 30 months of supervised released after his prison term, prosecutors said.
