A former prison guard in Otay Mesa, San Diego, has pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from a prisoner and his brothers. Benito Jamar Hugie, 49, admitted to being involved in a bribery conspiracy, alongside prisoner Shawn Brown and two men from Fresno who were identified as Brown’s brothers. The scheme involved smuggling a gold and diamond “grill” for Brown’s teeth into the prison.
Brown, along with other defendants, also pleaded guilty to running a COVID-19 unemployment benefits fraud scheme from behind bars. The scam allegedly earned them nearly $700,000 in cash payouts, which is only a fraction of the estimated $20 billion lost to pandemic unemployment fraud in California.
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Hugie had been working for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation since at least 2011. However, he lost his job after being indicted. His defense attorney, Douglas Brown, acknowledged his client’s poor decisions and took full responsibility for his actions. Brown’s attorney did not provide any comment without consulting his client first.
According to the indictment, Hugie accepted a minimum of $5,000 from Brown and his brothers. The entire scheme, including acquiring the bejeweled grill, bribing Hugie, and smuggling the grill into the prison, amounted to over $30,000. Hugie smuggled dental molds in and out of the facility in September 2020, so a jeweler in Houston could create the grill. The finished product was then smuggled into the prison for Brown the following month.
Meanwhile, the FBI discovered Brown’s fraudulent COVID-related unemployment claims while investigating the bribery scheme. Five residents from Fresno, including one of Brown’s brothers, and another inmate from Otay Mesa prison were also implicated in this fraud. Brown and five co-defendants admitted guilt to a wire fraud conspiracy charge. In exchange for his guilty plea in the bribery case, Hatcher, Brown’s brother, had the charge dropped against him in the wire fraud case.
The wire fraud guilty plea revealed that the fake unemployment scheme resulted in a loss of more than $550,000 to the state’s Employment Development Department.
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This article originally appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
