Former engineer at Kentucky steel plant gets prison time in kickback case
A former employee at a Kentucky steel mill who took part in a kickback scheme involving a $14.9 million contract has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.
Jaymin Vinson also must forfeit $452,125 under the sentence and is jointly liable for $753,625 in restitution with the man who bribed him.
Vinson was an engineer at the Nucor Steel Gallatin plant in Northern Kentucky in 2017 when Anthony “Tony” Berenyi approached him about getting a contract on a major expansion project at the mill.
Berenyi founded Berenyi Inc., a South Carolina company that provides engineering, architecture and construction services.
Vinson helped Berenyi get the contract, and Berenyi paid kickbacks to Vinson, building them into the charges to Nucor, according to court documents.
Vinson pleaded guilty a conspiracy charge, while a jury convicted Berenyi on 25 charges that included mail fraud and money laundering.
The prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney James T. Chapman, called Vinson the “inside man” in the scheme.
In addition to harming Nucor financially, Vinson “harmed society by contributing to a culture of fraud, instead of conducting business affairs truthfully,” the prosecutor wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
U.S. District Judge David Bunning sentenced Vinson March 14. He earlier sentenced Berenyi to two years and six months in prison and fined him $50,000.
