Executive Pleads Guilty to Racketeering, Agrees to Testify Against Ex-Senator

A construction executive at the center of Maryland's largest public corruption investigation in years pleaded guilty yesterday to racketeering and other offenses, agreeing to testify against his codefendant, former state senator Thomas L. Bromwell.

As part of his plea agreement, W. David Stoffregen certified as accurate a document that outlines secret payments to Bromwell and free or steeply discounted contracting work at the lawmaker's home in exchange for Bromwell's steering of state contracts to Stoffregen's firm, commercial contractor Poole and Kent Corp.

The guilty plea is by far the most significant of the six such pleas that federal prosecutors have netted in their investigation of Bromwell, a Baltimore County Democrat who was one of the most powerful figures in Annapolis before he left office in 2002.

Allegations of the improper exchange of cash and favors between the two men are at the heart of the prosecution's case, and with his plea, Stoffregen immediately becomes the star witness in a trial scheduled to begin in March.

The summary, filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, largely mirrors assertions made in the original racketeering indictment and in related cases involving other defendants.

Bromwell and his wife, Mary Pat, who was also charged in the racketeering indictment, have pleaded not guilty. Joshua Treem, one of Bromwell's attorneys, did not respond to a message seeking comment on the plea agreement. Stoffregen's attorneys and U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein declined to comment.

According to the summary, Stoffregen paid more than $190,000 to Bromwell, arranged the contracting work at his house and gave the lawmaker an ownership stake in International Partners Construction, a company that Stoffregen formed in 2000 to do business in Russia.

In exchange, it says, Bromwell saw to it that Poole and Kent was awarded a $13 million contract with the University of Maryland Medical System and arranged for expedited payments for work that the company performed on a state juvenile justice center project.

Bromwell's influence in the state Senate was considered so valuable, the summary says, that when he considered leaving the legislature for financial reasons, Stoffregen told him that if he agreed to stay, his wife would be given a job -- with an annual salary of $80,000 and no requirement to show up. Bromwell agreed, it says, and received payments of $192,000 disguised as salary from Namco, a company that Stoffregen controlled.

Stoffregen, 53, of Towson, pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud and filing a false tax return. Under the terms of the agreement, he will probably be sentenced to six to 18 years in prison. Stoffregen also agreed to forfeit more than $5.6 million, including his residence and a number of bank and other accounts.

The plea agreement is all but certain to complicate efforts to defend Bromwell, who was one of the most colorful figures in the legislature and who has been the head of a state agency, the Injured Workers' Insurance Fund, for three years.

Bromwell, a former tavern owner, was elected to the Senate in 1983. He rose to the powerful position of Finance Committee chairman and staged a daring but failed campaign to dislodge the Senate's longtime president, Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), in the final days of 2000.

In the summary filed, Stoffregen also acknowledged orchestrating a minority contracting fraud scheme involving Namco, a front company that was certified as female-owned and whose presence on a job allowed Pool and Kent to appear to meet minority contracting goals or requirements. The company, for example, enabled Poole and Kent to meet such requirements on a 2003 terminal expansion at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, it says.

The summary says that Stoffregen and others went to elaborate lengths to make the front company appear legitimate when inspectors from the Maryland Aviation Administration, which oversaw the project, announced that they wanted to visit Namco offices.

Stoffregen ordered that furniture, computers and documents be delivered to the largely empty space listed as the company address, the summary states. He directed Poole and Kent employees to create a company brochure. And on the day of the visit, it says, Mary Pat Bromwell posed as a receptionist.