Posted on: Sunday, April 3, 2005

Former Guam official gets two 5-year terms

Advertiser Staff

Austin J. "Sonny" Shelton, 55, on Friday was ordered to serve two five-year prison sentences for wire fraud and money laundering convictions, to run consecutively with an 11-year sentence for bribery and conspiracy to restrain trade convictions by federal Chief District Judge Robert C. Jones in Guam.

Shelton was responsible for procuring goods and services for the Guam Department of Parks and Recreation's efforts to clean up and repair typhoon damage, and he was convicted of using his position there to organize bid-rigging conspiracies and soliciting bribes from contractors.

Federal agencies involved in the prosecution included the U.S. attorney for the districts of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands; chief of the San Francisco field office, antitrust division; Charles Goodwin, special agent in charge of the FBI in Honolulu; the special agent in charge of the Department of Homeland Security; and the special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigative Division in Portland, Ore.