Earlier this month, a bail bondsman in Virginia was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for bribing public officials as part of a scheme to pick up new clients. And in October, a grand jury in Utah indicted a long-time FBI agent on obstruction charges for allegedly trying to thwart a fraud investigation involving a business partner.
There’s been no slowdown in corruption cases coming out of the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, where more than two dozen lawyers investigate and prosecute allegations of government official malfeasance across the country. Public Integrity last year charged 53 officials and private citizens, up from 39 in the previous year, according to the section’s annual report to Congress. The section more than doubled its number of trials in the past two years heading to court 28 times.
