Fifth person indicted in widening Metro Court scandal

A fifth person has been indicted in the widening Bernalillo County Metro Courthouse scandal.

Michael Murphy acted as a right-hand man for former Court Administrator Toby Martinez, prosecutors allege in the new indictment charging him today in the case. Read the new indictment by clicking here.

Prosecutors say the group bilked taxpayers out of a combined $4.2 million by inflating and falsifying invoices on the project. Three have pleaded guilty for their roles and, as of today, five others, including Martinez and former Senate President Manny Aragon, are facing felony charges including conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering.

Prosecutors say Murphy’s company, Public Private Investments, was hired in 2002 to oversee construction of the new courthouse. Murphy hasn’t yet had a chance to enter a plea, but prosecutors say he was involved, along with Martinez, in approving the falsified and inflated invoices.

Murphy’s attorney told the Albuquerque Tribune that he and his client would “study the indictment and respond in court at the appropriate time.”

A widening scandal

The indictment also alleges for the first time that the defendants may have tried to extend their scheme to another project – the development of state Department of Transportation land. The indictment doesn’t make clear which development project it’s referring to. Martinez was, for a time in 2005, project manager for the redevelopment of the state DOT headquarters in Santa Fe.

The Albuquerque Journal reported recently that Martinez and a subcontractor who is under indictment in the metro court case, Raul Parra, flew, at the state’s expense, with the transportation secretary to Dallas in 2005 for a meeting on the project. That was done even though, according to the state, Parra was not officially involved in the project.

But the DOT says that isn’t the project referred to the indictment. It says it refers to a separate, regional DOT redevelopment project in Santa Fe that never materialized.

“I was recently made aware of allegations that Toby Martinez and Raul Parra may have been plotting to defraud taxpayers by manipulating a planned Department of Transportation District 5 relocation project in Santa Fe,” DOT Secretary Rhonda Faught said in a news release. “That District 5 redevelopment project never moved forward, and I am confident that Martinez and Parra were not able to carry out the alleged scheme.”

“I was interviewed by federal law enforcement officials and provided all information requested by the FBI. I had no knowledge of Parra’s alleged role with the developer, or the alleged conspiracy with Martinez related to the District 5 project,” she said. “In fact, I approved the cancellation of the District 5 project earlier this year because we could not reach an agreement with the developer that was in the best interest of taxpayers.”

Prosecutors allege that Aragon and Parra urged the DOT to hire Martinez as manager of that project in 2004. After that, the indictment states, Martinez told the sole bidder on the project that he should hire Parra to put together its construction team.

The indictment states that Parra planned to tell the bidder he expected to receive a percentage of the project’s cost, and that he would be sharing the money with other people.

A prior version of this posting did not clearly distinguish the two DOT projects and did not include the comments from Faught.