NLRB Employee Charged With Bribery And Honest Services Fraud

 

 Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and David P. Berry, Inspector General of the National Labor Relations Board, announced today the unsealing of a Complaint charging ANETT RODRIGUES with honest services fraud and bribery.  The charges stem from a scheme in which RODRIGUES, an employee of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”), provided nonpublic NLRB documents to a co-conspirator in exchange for the regular payment of cash bribes.  RODRIGUES will be presented before United States Magistrate Judge Paul E. Davison in White Plains federal court later today.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “As alleged, Anett Rodrigues, a trusted employee of a federal agency with access to sensitive nonpublic information, monetized her position to divulge some of that information in exchange for bribes.  Rodrigues’s alleged selling of the information provided a competitive advantage to the alleged bribe payer’s company, but it also leaves Rodrigues facing multiple felony counts.”

As alleged in the Complaint unsealed in White Plains federal court[1]:

The NLRB is a federal agency that enforces United States labor law relating to unfair labor practices and collective bargaining.  Among other functions, the NLRB serves fact-finding and dispute-resolution functions, in which it investigates and resolves disputes between and among labor unions, company management, and company employees throughout the United States, and supervises the formation and elections of labor unions. Employees seeking to engage the NLRB to investigate and resolve a dispute may do so by filing a “charge sheet” outlining their allegations with their local NLRB regional office, and employees seeking the NLRB’s assistance in forming or joining a union can do so by filing a “petition” with their local NLRB regional office.  These charge sheets and petitions are not immediately publicly available, though they are provided to the companies involved, typically within a matter of days, and may be available in redacted form via Freedom of Information Act requests, typically within a matter of weeks.

ANETT RODRIGUES used her employment with the NLRB to provide a competitive advantage to a co-conspirator (“CC-1”) who operated a Westchester County-based company that offered consulting services to clients – principally law firms – appearing before the NLRB. Between approximately 2017 and approximately 2021, RODRIGUES regularly provided cellphone photographs of NLRB charge sheets and petitions to CC-1, before they were otherwise available to CC-1 or to the public.  CC-1 in turn sold the documents to clients for a per-document fee.  In exchange this assistance, CC-1 regularly met with RODRIGUES to provide her with cash bribe payments.

RODRIGUES, 53, of Nutley, New Jersey, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and one count of honest services wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, and one count of bribery, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.  The statutory maximum penalties are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant would be determined by the judge.

Mr. Williams praised the outstanding investigative work of the NLRB Office of the Inspector General’s investigator and the Special Agents of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The charges contained in the Complaint are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

[1] As the introductory phrase signifies, the entirety of the text of the Complaint and the description of the Complaint set forth in this release constitute only allegations, and every fact described should be treated as an allegation.