5 Men Sentenced in Family’s Multimillion-Dollar Scam

Four men convicted of a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme--run by a Simi Valley man with help from his father and two brothers--were sentenced Monday to eight months in a halfway house.

A fifth man was fined $35,000 and placed on five years probation.

The men were among 11 who pleaded guilty in September to charges of participating in the scam, masterminded by Donald A. Wright Jr., 36, of Simi Valley.

Wright owned two companies that supplied construction, electrical, plumbing and building maintenance materials and services, Assistant U.S. Attorney Carolyn Kubota said.

Using those firms and 27 other fictitious businesses, Wright paid bribes and kickbacks to chief engineers of hospitals and purchasing agents of other firms to get them to approve payment of invoices that inflated the cost of services provided or billed for nonexistent goods, Kubota said.

U.S. District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer sentenced one of Wright’s brothers--Michael Patrick Wright, 29, of Lancaster--to spend eight months in a halfway house for his role in the scam, which ran for several years before the men were indicted last August.

Michael Wright also was fined $75,000 and ordered to pay $12,874 in restitution to Washington Medical Center, where he had been a chief engineer.

The defendant’s older brother, Donald A. Wright Jr., and father, Donald A. Wright Sr., 58, a former director of engineering at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital in Inglewood, are expected to be sentenced on Jan. 22.

In addition to Michael Wright, three other men were sentenced to a community treatment center or halfway house, and fined thousands of dollars.