FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MAY 24, 2005 WWW.USDOJ.GOV CRM (202) 514-2008 TDD (202) 514-1888 WASHINGTON, D.C. - Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division and Inspector General Glenn A. Fine announced today that Russell F. Trapp, 54, a former employee of the United States Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Louisiana, has agreed to plead guilty in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana to a criminal information charging him with willfully engaging in a conflict of interest, a felony violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 208(a) and 216(a)(2). Trapp worked as the Coordinator for the Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee (LECC) Program of the U.S. Attorneys Office from June 1994 to February 2003. He is expected to formally enter a plea of guilty to the information during a plea hearing to be scheduled in early June.
The LECC Program fosters cooperation among law enforcement agencies by giving training seminars to local and state law enforcement. Each of the United States Attorneys Offices employs a full-time LECC Coordinator to arrange this training. As his offices LECC Coordinator, Trapp was responsible for arranging the training and had the discretion and authority to recommend and hire Government vendors who were paid to give the training. Periodically, he also recommended Government vendors to LECC Coordinators in other United States Attorneys Offices for LECC-sponsored training their offices gave, either separately or in conjunction with his office.
According to the plea documents, in October 1999, Trapp began negotiating with a Government vendor, PHI Investigative Consultants (PHI), to give periodic LECC-sponsored training seminars for the Middle District of Louisiana and other United States Attorneys Offices. At the same time, he arranged for PHI to hire his wife to plan and coordinate all seminars that PHI conducted. His wife then began operating a business doing seminar planning and coordination work for PHI between 2000-2002. During the same time period, after first negotiating with PHI about the cost of the work his wife was going to do, Trapp also contacted the LECC Coordinator in the Western District of Texas and recommended that the coordinator hire PHI to conduct training seminars in that District. As the result of these business dealings, PHI paid Trapps wife more than $55,000 between 2000-2002. Trapp, in turn, directly received more than $20,000 from this conflict of interest crime.
After identifying the misconduct, the U.S. Attorneys Office referred the matter to the Washington Field Office of the Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice, for investigation. The U.S. Attorneys Office thereafter recused itself from this matter, and the prosecution is being handled by Trial Attorney Kartik K. Raman of the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., headed by Noel L. Hillman, Chief. 05-289
Source: US Department of Justice
