A San Francisco restaurant owner who has agreed to cooperate
in an ongoing criminal case against the city’s former public works director is
due to plead guilty to two counts in federal court Thursday afternoon.
Nick Bovis, 56, of San Mateo, the owner of Lefty O’Doul’s restaurant,
was initially charged in January along with then-Public Works Director Mohammed
Nuru with one count of honest services wire fraud in an alleged scheme to bribe
a San Francisco International Airport commissioner in 2018.
The scheme to obtain the commissioner’s aid in obtaining a restaurant
concession was never completed, according to the Jan. 15 criminal complaint.
Nuru resigned from office in February and the charge against him remains
pending while he is free on a $2 million bond.
Last week, Bovis promised in a plea agreement to cooperate
with prosecutors and to plead guilty to revised charges of one count of honest services
wire fraud plus one count of wire fraud. He is scheduled to enter the plea
before U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco at 1:30 p.m.
Thursday.
But the part of Bovis’s plea agreement that describes the
conduct underlying the two counts was sealed, and U.S. Attorney’s Office
spokesman Abraham Simmons said he does not expect it to be disclosed Thursday.
“The facts supporting the Bovis guilty plea have been
filed under seal, and I don’t expect they will be made public at the plea hearing,”
Simmons said on Wednesday.
In the Jan. 15 criminal complaint, the honest services wire
fraud charge lodged against both Nuru and Bovis is defined as using wire communications,
including phone calls, text messages and emails, to arrange meetings and
discuss the supposed scheme to deprive the public of the honest services of the
unnamed airport commissioner.
The two counts to which Bovis plans to plead guilty each
carry a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison, but the judge is
expected to consider federal sentencing guidelines as well as any potential
prosecution request for a lesser sentence. A sentencing date has not been set.
Source: NBC Bay Area