A Bucks County contractor who extorted hundreds of
dollars in kickbacks from his employees was sentenced Tuesday in Camden to more
than seven years in federal prison, federal prosecutors said.
Leonard Santos, 68, of Yardley, was the owner of Sands
Mechanical Inc. The company had been hired in 2009 to provide sheet metal,
electrical and plumbing work at the Marine Corps Reserve Training Center at the
military base in Ft. Dix, Burlington County.
According to federal prosecutors, Santos threatened to
fire various employees who did not kick back a portion of their weekly paychecks.
Employees who resisted were threatened with physical violence. When a
supervisor on the Ft. Dix project began to ask questions, Santos paid $500 to
have the man’s pickup truck torched. In another incident, Santos ordered a
driver to run the man down and paid $4,000 to the driver for repairs to the
car. The man’s injuries kept him off the base and unable to supervise Santos’
actions.
Santos, sentenced to
85 months in prison, previously pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy
to obtain kickbacks from public works employees and causing persons to travel
in interstate commerce to commit a crime of violence.
Source: Philly.com
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