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A federal fugitive search in suburban Detroit ended with a grim discovery Friday morning.
Agents with an arrest warrant found the body of James Warner, a former Detroit Metropolitan Airport field inspector who didn't show up to start a 10-year prison term for taking $6 million in bribes, The Detroit News reports.
U.S. Marshals Service deputies found Warner dead of an apparent suicide in the garage of his Commerce Township home on Friday morning. ...
Relatives told investigators they went out to dinner with Warner on Wednesday and hadn't seen him since.
The 55-year-old Oakland County resident died from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning, a federal court spokesman said.
Original article, Friday morning:
Ex-Detroit Metro Airport supervisor James Warner was convicted of taking $6 million in bribes. On Thursday at 10 a.m., he was scheduled to report to the Milan Correctional Facility near Ann Arbor to start a 10-year term.
(Photo: Wayne County Airport Authority)
He never showed and instead became a fugitive, Robert Snell of The Detroit News reports.
The $6 million was the highest bribe haul ever unearthed in the Eastern District of Michigan and among the largest nationally, prosecutors said at sentencing.
They asked for a 25-year prison term, far more than the 10 years U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts gave the Commerce Township resident in February 2020.
Warner, 52, of Commerce Township, was a field inspector at the Wayne County Airport Authority.
From May of 2010 through August of 2014, authorities alleged that Warner directed more than $43 million in airport infrastructure projects to three co-conspirators—William Pritula, Douglas Earles and Gary Tenaglia—in exchange for over $6 million in kickbacks.
On one occasion, Warner falsified the square footage and asphalt depth on an airport roadway project and approved a $938,000 bill from Pritula’s company for work which Pritula’s subcontractor only invoiced $275,000, authorities. Warner and Pritula then split the profit.
Co-conspirators Pritula, 69, of Romulus, Earles, 60, of White Lake, and Tenaglia, 65, of Commerce Township pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery and theft.
