A broad kickback scandal tied to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and at least two Louisiana district attorney’s offices has officials scrambling, opting to put some contracts on ice while commissioning audits aimed at assessing the scope of the damage.
The scandal’s central figure, Dusty Guidry, has admitted taking more than $800,000 in kickbacks from firms that provide programs aimed at helping people accused of crimes stay on track. Provided the programs are approved by the DA, those who complete them can have their records cleansed.
Dusty Guidry
Guidry, who oversaw pretrial diversion programs in the DA’s offices in Baton Rouge and Lafayette for many years, has admitted that in Lafayette, he helped loosen the eligibility requirements for defendants seeking diversion. That led to a steep increase in recent years in the number of people going through them.
Rafael Goyeneche, president of the watchdog Metropolitan Crime Commission, called the mess “the largest criminal justice scandal on the state level I’ve seen in 40 years.”
He added: “It’s frightening not only in terms of how much money Guidry collected from this, but in terms of how many felony offenders who weren’t eligible for diversion may have gotten to go through this process.”
Goyeneche said the situation calls for a long look back.
“There needs to be an audit conducted of all the cases that have gone through diversion in Baton Rouge and Lafayette,” he said. “And if these vendors are doing business in any other jurisdictions, they need to be audited as well. This is a massive compromising of the state’s criminal justice system.”
Some scrutiny will definitely occur, said Loren Lampert, executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, though he noted that the Guidry developments “are very recent and there is so much that we don’t know.”
Given what is known so far, Lampert said, “it is reasonable to expect that DAs will examine their programs in light of the limited information in order to do their best to ensure program integrity. Best practices in all of our efforts, including diversion, is a pretty constant topic within our organization.”
Some steps taken
Some initial steps have been taken by various agencies linked to the scandal.
Last week, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries canceled its contract with a company linked to Guidry after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to collect kickbacs with the agency’s former leader, Jack Montoucet.
Guidry had served as a member of the Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, a volunteer board that oversees some aspects of the agency, in addition to his work with the 15th and 19th Judicial District Attorney’s Offices.
Montoucet resigned as secretary of the LDWF on April 14, a day after The Advocate | The Times-Picayune identified him as the unnamed official described in Guidry’s guilty plea.
Montoucet has not been charged with a crime.
Based on Guidry’s admissions, on April 18, Wildlife and Fisheries officials canceled their contract with DGL1, a firm owned by Lafayette businessman Leonard Franques IV. Montoucet had hired the firm in October 2021 to provide online courses on hunting and boating as well as corrective courses for people who violate hunting or boating laws.
Guidry says Franques – who is described in court documents but not identified by name – paid him approximately $89,000 in kickbacks related to the LDWF contract between the time it was signed and Guidry’s guilty plea in March 2023. Franques, who has not responded to numerous messages from the newspaper, has not been charged.
The document says Montoucet was to receive cash kickbacks too, as well as an all-terrain vehicle worth $14,000 from Franques. But it indicates those gifts were to be paid after Montoucet’s retirement. An appointee of Gov. John Bel Edwards, Montoucet would have been expected to resign when Edwards leaves office in January 2024.
It’s unclear if Montoucet ever received any money or gifts in connection with the arrangement. He has not answered multiple questions posed by the newspaper.
Firms linked to Guidry
Franques made his fortune as owner of a host of Pizza Hut franchises around Acadiana. In 2020, he formed DGL1 and Lake Wellness LLC, one of four pretrial diversion firms used by the 15th Judicial District Attorney’s Office that is also tied into the federal bribery probe, according to documents.
The other three companies the 15th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has used are Acadian Monitoring and Evaluations, C & A Consulting Services and Burton Services, according to District Attorney Don Landry.
Landry has said he is replacing the four vendors in the wake of Guidry’s admissions. He has also said his office has tightened eligibility requirements for diversion, though he has not offered specifics.
The 27th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, in St. Landry Parish, used another of the vendors caught up in the scandal, Burton Services, according to records provided by that office. The office no longer uses the firm, but officials didn’t immediately say whether it was a result of the recent news.
Over in the 19th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, where Guidry also worked, DA Hillar Moore said that his office has suspended any dealings with C & A Consulting for the time being. That was the only one of the four firms used in Lafayette that his office also used, Moore said.
Juanita Prejean, who along with her husband, Joseph, is a principal in C & A. She declined to comment when reached earlier this week. C & A’s website was taken down minutes after a reporter reached her.
Beyond suspending C & A, Moore said he has been “re-evaluating” the diversion program more broadly since Guidry left, including the vendors it uses. He also said an annual audit of the office is under way now.
“The audit will include an enhanced review of the PTI (diversion) program, which we welcome,” he said by email. “It does cause me concern if in fact any of our providers are implicated in wrongdoing. I would immediately take the appropriate action. In the meantime, I am simply suspending referrals to this group based on the information you reported.”
Moore said Guidry worked for the 19th Judicial District Attorney’s Office for 23 years, earning a salary of $107,600. He offered his resignation on Dec. 13, 2021, days after he was arrested by St. Martin Parish sheriff’s deputies on suspicion of distributing narcotics.
Guidry also resigned from the WIldlife and Fisheries Commission at that time.
He stayed on at the 15th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, where he was a contractor, until the middle of 2022, when the FBI raided the DA’s offices.
Landry has not said why he kept Guidry on after his 2021 arrest.
The 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has not filed charges against Guidry in the drug case. District Attorney Bo Duhe hasn’t responded to messages seeking comment about its status.
Thomas Lorenzi, who represents Guidry in his federal case, said he doesn’t represent him in the St. Martin Parish drug matter. His lawyer in that case, Barry Sallinger, did not return phone messages.
Leave a Reply