If you see someone walking towards you on the street holding out a $100 bill and asking if you want it, most people will avoid the person, say something like “I don’t come that cheap!” or “No, I do not have change…” We all know those people are wacky.
But if in any kind of minimum relationship and someone bends over and picks up a $100 bill and asks if it is yours…. what do YOU do? Do you take it? Then you can be bribed.
The article below is why to buy IMPORTED tomatoes and not buy from Safeway. And it is about BRIBES and TAINTED tomatoes.
Bribes Let Tomato Vendor Sell Tainted Food By WILLIAM NEUMAN
“Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes.
The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,†he said, using a euphemism for bribes.
Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices near Chicago and confronted Mr. Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a startling vein of corruption in the food industry.
And because the scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato products with high levels of mold or other defects, the case has raised serious questions about how well food manufacturers safeguard the quality of their ingredients.
Over the last 14 months, Mr. Watson and three other purchasing managers, at Frito-Lay, Safeway and B&G Foods, have pleaded guilty to taking bribes. Five people connected to one of the nation’s largest tomato processors, SK Foods, have also admitted taking part in the scheme.
Now, federal prosecutors in California have taken aim at the owner of SK Foods, who they say spearheaded the far-reaching plot. The man, Frederick Scott Salyer, was arrested at Kennedy Airport in New York City on Feb. 4 after getting off a flight from Switzerland. He was indicted last week on racketeering, fraud and obstruction of justice charges.
The scheme, as laid out by federal prosecutors, has two parts. Officials say that Mr. Salyer and others at SK Foods greased the palms of a handful of corporate buyers in exchange for lucrative contracts and confidential information on bids submitted by competitors. This most likely drove up ingredient prices for the big food companies.
In addition, prosecutors say that for years, SK Foods shipped its customers millions of pounds of bulk tomato paste and puree that fell short of basic quality standards — with falsified documentation to mask the problems. Often that meant mold counts so high the sale should have been prohibited under federal law; at other times it involved breaching specifications in the sales contracts, such as acidity levels or the age of the product.
The scope of the tainted shipments was much broader than the bribery scheme, touching more than 55 companies. In some cases, companies detected problems and sent the products back — but in many cases, according to prosecutors, they did not, and the tainted ingredients wound up in food sold to consumers.
Prosecutors said that no one was sickened by the mold-tainted products and that they were not a health risk.
Benjamin B. Wagner, the United States attorney in Sacramento, whose office has led the investigation, said he was also looking at allegations of collusion and price fixing involving SK Foods and other tomato processors.
“If you have a couple of people who are willing to bend the rules and they set that tone from the top, that can spread very quickly in that company and in that niche of the industry, and that’s what happened here,†Mr. Wagner said.
Malcolm Segal, a lawyer for Mr. Salyer, said his client had done nothing wrong. “The allegations against Mr. Salyer are unsupported except by individuals who have pled guilty and who are seeking a personal benefit in the sentencing process,†Mr. Segal said.
Randy W. Worobo, an associate professor of food microbiology at Cornell University, said companies should learn from the SK Foods case that they must do a better job of monitoring their ingredients.
“There’s been a lot of hype about inferior-quality products being made in China and then sold to the U.S. consumer,†Mr. Worobo said. “This is exactly the same thing, but it’s based in the U.S.â€
Prosecutors say that Mr. Salyer ran the fraud along with Randall Rahal, a New Jersey businessman who acted as a broker for SK Foods, negotiating deals with many of the firm’s largest customers.
It was Mr. Rahal who made the contacts with the four buyers who took bribes. He was caught on a wiretap in April 2008, promising to help Mr. Watson with his tax payment, according to court papers. In another conversation, reported by a witness, Mr. Rahal explained the art of ascertaining whether a person would be susceptible to bribery.
According to court papers, Mr. Rahal recounted how he would drop a $100 bill on the floor, then bend to pick it up, saying: “You must have dropped this. Is it yours?†If the person said yes, Mr. Rahal considered him receptive. Mr. Rahal pleaded guilty to racketeering, price fixing and money laundering charges in December 2008 and has been cooperating with investigators. His lawyer, Christopher D. Adams of New Jersey, did not respond to requests for comment.
