The co-owner of a Huntington Park tow truck company is facing a possible federal prison sentence Monday for lying to FBI agents investigating an attempt to bribe one of the city’s elected officials.
Sukhbir Singh, 39, and his company, H.P. Automotive & Tow, were charged in February in a two-count federal indictment that accuses him of offering to funnel campaign contributions to a member of Huntington Park’s city council in exchange for the councilman’s support in hiking the company’s towing fees.
The indictment states that the councilman was a “cooperating witness,” meaning the legislator was working with the FBI when Singh paid the bribe.
Singh pleaded guilty in July to making false statements to the FBI last winter when he stated that he had never discussed the proposed tow fee increase with the councilman and when he said that he had not discussed how payments could made so as to disguise the source of the money, federal prosecutors said.
According to the criminal complaint, Singh gave a total of $2,650 in checks to the councilman — whose identity was not revealed in court papers — between August 2013 and March 2015, although the affidavit in support of the complaint notes that two checks totaling $800 were rejected for insufficient funds and because a signature was illegible.
The bribery scheme followed an August 19, 2013, meeting in which the City Council voted 3-2 to deny a request by H.P. Tow to increase towing and vehicle storage fees.
Ten days later, Singh met with the FBI’s cooperating witness in the first of a series of meetings that included discussions of Singh and H.P. Tow making campaign contributions to the councilman, and Singh offered to make the bribe payments through third-party checks to a campaign account, according to the affidavit.
The Huntington Park City Council approved the fee increases for H.P. Tow in January in a vote in which the cooperating witness did not participate.
Singh faces up to five years in federal prison at sentencing before U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez.
