A valet parking vendor pleaded guilty Monday to bribing the former tribal chairman in exchange for parking contracts at the Soboba Casino.
Abbas Shilleh, 47, entered the plea to one count of paying a bribe to an Indian reservation when he wrote checks totaling $50,000 to former tribal chairman Robert Salgado.
Salgado pleaded guilty last year two felony counts of accepting $875,000 in bribes from Shilleh and four other vendors in exchange for contracts and capital improvements at the Soboba Casino and on the reservation outside San Jacinto.
In a plea deal with prosecutors, Shilleh is set to be sentenced June 6 to three years probation and eight months of electronically monitored house arrest. He must also pay a $100,000 fine and perform 500 hours of community service. He could have faced up to 10 years in federal prison.
Under the plea agreement, Shilleh admitted that made the payments for a contract in March 2007 at the casino through his business, California Parking Services.
During a two week period in December 2006 and early 2007, Shilleh wrote three checks written to the longtime chairman and to "cash." No others members of the tribe were charged.
Silleh's attorney, Mark Werksman, said his client was not aware at the time that the payments for the contract were illegal, since the tribe receives federal funding.
"You can pay advance fees to obtain a contract, but that's not a bribe," Weksman said. "But when you do that to an Indian tribe, that's where it runs afoul of a federal statute."
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