To view the PDF you will need Acrobat Reader, which may be downloaded from the Adobe site . For an official signed copy, please contact the Antitrust Documents Group . A New York City food distribution company and its president today pleaded guilty to bid rigging, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the IRS for their role in five separate schemes to rig bids on frozen food, produce, dairy, and other products, the Department of Justice announced. Including today's filing, the Department's ongoing investigation of bid rigging, bribery, fraud, and tax-related offenses in the food distribution industry has resulted in the Antitrust Division's New York Field Office charging 27 individuals and 14 food companies with rigging bids for the supply and delivery of food to various public and private customers in the New York metropolitan area.
All recommendations are subject to court approval.
The Antitrust Division will prosecute aggressively all cases where taxpayers have been cheated out of the benefits of competition. Those charges will be dismissed after sentencing in this case. It services a student population of nearly 1.1 million, and serves approximately 640,000 lunches and 150,000 breakfasts every day. It is the second largest customer for food in the United States, behind only the Department of Defense. It receives the bulk of its funding from the federal, state, and city governments, most of the meals it serves are subsidized by the United States Department of Agriculture pursuant to the National School Lunch Act of 1946.