Summary

Ricardo Mendez, the former Assistant Aviation Director of Facilities Development for the Miami-Dade County Aviation Department, and his wife, Mirta Mendez, were indicted by a Federal grand jury on charges of bribery, money laundering, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. The charges arose out of a continuing Federal probe into corruption at Miami International Airport, and include contracts awarded for cleaning contaminated soil and the granting of service orders to provide three dimensional computer simulations of airport building projects. As a part of this investigation, two other individuals recently pleaded guilty to paying bribes to obtain airport projects. Engineering contractor Edwin L. Perkinson pleaded guilty on July 23 in U.S. District Court in Miami to charges of paying $81,500 in bribes in exchange for Mendez expediting approval of a no-bid airport environmental contract. On August 3, graphics contractor Marilyn J. Parker pleaded guilty to paying $145,000 in bribes to Ricardo Mendez and Mirta Mendez in connection with the awarding of the service orders. OIG investigated this case with IRS-CID, Miami-Dade Police Department and the State Attorney's Office.