Bay Ingram, a well-connected St. Tammany Parish businessman, pleaded guilty in New Orleans on Wednesday to a count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Ingram, 50, of Covington,?has confessed to?fabricating documents?in a bid to defraud?BP for a helicopter and helipads used to help the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office do recovery work after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010.
He faces as much as five years in prison. U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Vance set a Feb. 20 sentencing date.
Vance postponed accepting the plea agreement pending a pre-sentencing report. The conspiracy charge carries a lesser sentence than a charge for actual wire fraud, where the maximum is 20 years.
"I'm guilty, yes," Ingram said as the judge queried him on his plea. Ingram declined to comment on the case outside the courtroom, as did his attorney, Pat Fanning.
As part of his plea deal, Ingram agreed to drop a civil lawsuit against BP over the company's alleged failure to pay for the helicopter and helipads.
Ingram's varied business interests have ranged from surgical hospitals to nightclubs to video bingo machines. He owns the Bimini Bay?lounge in Slidell, where he has hosted political fundraisers and charity events. He is a frequent contributor to local political campaigns.
Ingram maneuvered his way into a helicopter procurement deal by falsely claiming to one BP official that another one had approved it, according to a federal bill of information.
Then-St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stephens had asked BP to pay for a helicopter to help the sheriff's office and the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries do emergency work in the parish following the Macondo blowout.
BP initially paid Ingram $113,000 for the first few weeks of invoices, and in turn he paid Rotorcraft Leasing Company $52,000 for the helicopter hours.
According to federal prosecutors, Ingram never received proper approval for use of the helicopter after June 15, 2010.
Yet he invoiced BP more than $1.4 million over nearly six months and "desperately sought payment" -- enlisting Stephens to press the oil giant for payment, according to a civil lawsuit that Ingram's business, Southeast Recovery Group, filed against BP.
Ingram "falsified and forged dozens of pages of documents provided to BP." Among them was a contract with a forged signature. He also is accused of falsifying flight logs, listing flights that were never taken and bloating the number of oil spill-related flights.
The helicopter, dubbed "Sheriff One," was stationed at a BP operating base in Hopedale. That's also where Ingram sought to have several helipads built, hiring subcontractors for the work.
In summer of 2010, he paid subcontractors a little more than $110,000 for the helipad construction, then billed BP $254,000. Ingram also added a 20-percent markup, for a total bill of more than $300,000, the feds allege.
BP paid his company that money.
But Ingram wasn't getting paid for the helicopter use by that point, and eventually Rotorcraft Leasing Company and other unpaid subcontractors sought documentation from Ingram that BP intended to pay him.
At that point, according to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office, Ingram created false emails, including some from a fictional executive for a BP subcontractor.
Early this month, Stephens, who is now retired after 28 years as sheriff, declined to comment on the charge, saying only that he has "cooperated completely" with the investigation and that he had a "friend and business relationship" with Ingram.
A major contributor to Gov. Bobby Jindal's campaign, Ingram was appointed by Jindal to the state Mineral Board in March 2008. Then, he was listed as being the president of Healthcare Holdings of Louisiana and Ingram Investments.
In 2006, Ingram was caught up in a controversy involving the sale of a former golf practice facility along Interstate 12 near Slidell to St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain's office.
Ingram and frequent business partner Don McMath -- both contributors to Strain's campaign - bought the property for $2 million, then sold it to the sheriff for $2.4 million a few hours later. Strain defended the move as a good value for the money.
Vance allowed Ingram free on his existing $25,000 bond pending his sentencing?.
Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/11/covington_businessman_pleads_g.html
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