Harlan Kelly Jr., the former bigwig of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), has been slapped with a four-year prison stint for his role in corruption schemes, including a bribery conspiracy and bank fraud rackets. The sentence, alongside a hefty $10,000 fine, was handed down on Monday by Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg, marking a climactic turn in the saga of deceit that has unraveled over the past six years. Kelly, convicted back in July last year, has been found guilty of swapping his influence for personal luxuries, a move that's scored him a ticket to the clink, set to commence this June, according to an announcement by First Assistant United States Attorney Patrick J. Robbins.
Betrayal of the public trust seems to have been Kelly's trade, as the FBI's Robert Tripp highlighted, noting in a statement obtained by the Justice Department that Kelly hoisted his personal gain above the service owed to San Franciscans and now faces a reckoning behind bars. The investigation laid bare that Kelly, 61, accepted bribes such as swanky trips to Hong Kong and China and free construction work on his house. All this was in exchange for providing a contractor with confidential PUC documents and helping them secure contracts worth millions.
But Kelly's rap sheet didn't end with honest services fraud. He was also caught up in a separate bank fraud scheme, where the jury found him complicit in conning Quicken Loans during a mortgage loan application worth a cool $1.3 million. This little arrangement also involved Victor Makras, 65, who, alongside Kelly, was convicted of bank fraud and making false statements. Kelly's mischief led to a superseding indictment in May last year, swamping him with a medley of charges from conspiracy to wire fraud, which eventually secured his guilty verdict.
The crackdown on Kelly is part of a larger, six-year dragnet by the U.S. Attorney's office into the seedy underbelly of San Francisco's public corruption, an effort that has seen more than a dozen individuals and two corporations pleading guilty or coughing up to their involvement in the corruption fest. Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Ward and Kristina Green ran point on Kelly’s case, which benefited from the investigative prowess of the FBI and CI, as highlighted on the Justice Department's website.
