Crime & Safety
VRE Manager Guilty of Bribery
A VRE manager from Fredericksburg collected more than $200,000 from a landscaping company.
A former Virginia Railway Express (VRE) manager took bribes of more than $200,000 to ensure a landscaping and maintenance subcontractor retained their contract.
Kevin Wirth Jannell, 49, of Fredericksburg pleaded guilty today, according to an announcement from officials at the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the FBI Washington Field Office and the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General.
Jannell was a facilities manager for VRE and supervised contracts for VRE landscaping and maintenance. In order to collect bribes, he created a nominee company to bill the subcontractor’s company $4,000 per month. Jannell agreed to give the company positive reviews that kept the subcontractor on the job, according to reports filed with his plea agreement. The payments to Jannell were made between 2003 and March of this year, and Jannell now faces up to 10 years in prison.
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The total amount Jannell collected was somewhere between $200,000 and $400,000.
Jannell will be sentenced Dec. 21.
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