Former Maui County employee Wilfred Tamayo Savella pleaded guilty Monday morning in U.S. District Court for accepting bribes in a long-running scheme involving the awarding of contracts to a Honolulu-based wastewater services business.

Savella, who retired from the county in November 2020 as a maintenance mechanic supervisor for the Department of Environmental Management, was charged for accepting bribes valued at more than $40,000 from Milton Choy, owner of H2O Process Systems, from about 2013 to 2017, according to court documents.  

Savella’s former boss, Environmental Management Director Stewart Stant, has also been charged separately and pleaded guilty to taking bribes during his time at the county.

Savella, 71, who was making his initial appearance in court Monday on Oahu, waived his indictment before entering the guilty plea to one count of “acceptance of bribes in connection with the transactions of a local government receiving federal funds.”

Savella, who is not in custody, faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, plus a term of supervised release of up to three years.

His sentencing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. April 20, before Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi.

“Mr. Savella was clearly a minor player in the overall scheme,” said Victor Bakke, Savella’s attorney outside of court. “However, (he) did take responsibility for what (he) did.”

Bakke said that Savella “wasn’t out soliciting bribes, they came to him.”

Savella accepted $40,000 over about four years, as compared to his boss, Stant, who took in more than $2 million in six years, Bakke said.

“He really wasn’t involved in any of the stuff,” Bakke said. “They just needed his signature on some things.”

The bribes were made in cash, bank deposits, at least one gambling trip to Las Vegas, casino chips and other financial benefits, totaling more than $40,000, in exchange for Savella assisting in awarding lucrative sole source contracts and purchase orders to Choy’s company, according to an information charging document unsealed last week.

Savella worked for the department for approximately 32 years, and as a maintenance mechanic supervisor for the final 10 years of employment, he “played a role in determining what maintenance and wastewater system equipment, parts and services DEM needed to properly outfit and maintain DEM’s wastewater treatment activities,” according to the memorandum of plea agreement Monday.

He also played a role in “providing contract expertise with respect to various sole source and other contracts entered into by DEM in order to operate and maintain their systems,” the plea agreement said.

Between July 2014 and December 2017, when the county department awarded H2O at least 52 sole source contracts totaling more than $19 million, Savella was listed as the primary point of contact on 35 of the contracts, the charging documents say.

It adds that there were two times when Savella provided his banking account information to Choy, who made deposits into the account shortly before sole source contracts were issued to H2O.  

Choy pleaded guilty in September to bribing Stant, who also pleaded guilty in September and admitted to taking $2 million in bribes from Choy to help secure more than $19 million in county contracts for H2O.

Choy and Stant are awaiting sentencing.

* Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.