Two months after the disclosure of drug usage, inappropriate sexual activity and contract misdealing by former employees of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), a former agency official was sentenced Friday for a felony violation of the criminal conflict of interest law, federal prosecutors said.

Jimmy W. Mayberry, former special assistant to the associate director of Minerals Revenue Management at the MMS, was sentenced to two years of probation and a $2.500 fine by Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Mayberry, 65 and a resident of Strawn, TX, pleaded guilty to the felony violation in July. He admitted in plea documents that he created the requirements for a contract before his retirement from the MMS, knowing that he would bid on the contract immediately after his retirement.

An investigation by Interior’s Office of Inspector General revealed that Mayberry and Lucy Querques Denett, associate director of MMS’ Minerals Revenue Management, had acted together to create the lucrative contract for Mayberry when he retired in January 2003 to start a consulting firm, which he called Federal Business Solutions. In June 2003 MMS awarded the contract to Mayberry’s firm.

Milton K. Dial, a former MMS official who was good friends with Denett and Mayberry, oversaw the contract for MMS. In February 2005, shortly after his retirement from MMS, Dial began working for Mayberry. When the original contract expired, MMS awarded a new contract to Mayberry’s firm in January 2006.

In mid-September, Dial pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the restrictions on post-government employment that involved the illegal awarding of a contract to a company of a retired agency colleague (see Daily GPI, Sept. 11).

Dial, 60 and a resident of Las Vegas, NV, pleaded guilty before Judge Robert C. Jones of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada to a single count charging him with a felony violation of restrictions on former employees of the executive branch of the United States government that bar them from trying to influence any federal department, agency or court on behalf of another person.

Dial faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and a term of supervised release when his term is up. Sentencing has been scheduled for Dec. 15 in Las Vegas.

The matter involving Denett, Mayberry and Dial “paint[s] a disturbing picture of three senior executives who were good friends and who remained calculatedly ignorant of the rules governing post-employment restrictions,” said Interior Inspector General Earl Devaney in a report to Congress in September.

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