Former Maryland Cabinet Secretary Accused Of Taking Bribes
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A former Maryland Cabinet secretary has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges related to an alleged bribery conspiracy involving millions of dollars in information technology contracts, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced Wednesday.
Isabel FitzGerald, 47, served in several state government jobs from February 2007 through December 2014, most of them in the Department of Human Resources. She went on become a part of then-Gov. Martin O'Malley's Cabinet as head of the Maryland Department of Information Technology, a position she held as the state grappled to address the state's flawed rollout of its health benefit exchange, which was bedeviled by computer problems.
The six-count indictment outlines an alleged conspiracy involving information technology contracts with the Maryland Department of Human Services awarded by the department in 2008. One was a nearly six-year contract worth up to about $129 million. A second contract was a five-year, six-month applications contract that was worth about $229 million.
Kenneth Coffland, who worked for an unidentified company between 2009 and 2011, also has been charged in the indictment. Steve Maudlin, CEO of Indiana-based The Consultants Consortium Inc., and James Pangallo, the chief financial officer of TCC, also have been charged in the conspiracy, the U.S. attorney's office said.
"According to the indictment, FitzGerald and Coffland received and agreed to receive a stream of financial benefits from Maudlin and Pangallo in exchange for FitzGerald's performance of official acts for TCC's benefit," a news release from the U.S. attorney's office said.
The indictment says FitzGerald and Coffland solicited and demanded at various times that Maudlin and Pangallo pay Coffland and FitzGerald one-third of TCC's profits on specified subcontracts with the unidentified company. The defendants agreed that TCC would pay FitzGerald and Coffland under the guise of consulting work performed by companies set up by FitzGerald and Coffland, investigators said.
FitzGerald also is accused of concealing financial agreements with TCC from high-ranking personnel in Maryland government.
It was not clear whether any of the defendants had attorneys.
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