United States v. Brad Dong Lee, James Young Lee

In this consolidated appeal, James and Brad Lee appeal their convictions on eleven counts of bribery of public officials and conspiracy to bribe public officials under 18 U.S.C. §§ 201 (b) and 371. We affirm.

I.

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW

Brad Lee was the president and James Lee was the on-site manager of Western Building Cleaning Company (“Western”). Western had a contract with the United States Navy to perform custodial work at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. The Navy employed civilian inspectors to review whether or not Western had correctly performed the various tasks it had contracted to perform. If an inspector determined that a task had not been performed, he would write up a deduction on a discrepancy report or “chit.” At the end of each month the Navy would reduce its payments to Western under the contract by an amount calculated from the chits.

The Lees decided to pay the inspectors to reduce the number of deductions against Western, thus increasing Western’s profitability. According to the government, James Lee began to cultivate a relationship with one of the government inspectors, Felix Baluyot, in Feburary 1984, soon after Western began working at the shipyard.…