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NEW YORK — A California businessman implicated in a corruption scandal at New York's public pension fund secretly pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor securities fraud charge two months ago, authorities revealed Tuesday.
Julio Ramirez, a former agent for the Wetherly Capital Group, is the sixth person charged and one of two to plead guilty in a probe of alleged kickbacks and influence peddling at the fund during the tenure of former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday said it is also filing civil charges against Ramirez.
New York's attorney general said Ramirez, 48, of San Marino, Calif., was one of a number of people seeking pension fund investments who sealed the deal by making huge payments to one of Hevesi's top political aides.
Two investment firms that hired Wetherly to drum up business ultimately received $50 million each from the retirement fund after Ramirez agreed to share fees from the deals with the aide, Hank Morris. Wetherly made $630,000 on the investment. Morris took home $250,000, according to prosecutors.
"This investigation has uncovered a matrix of corruption," Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.
Ramirez entered his guilty plea in a New York City courtroom on March 5, but the case remained sealed until Monday.
His lawyer, G. Michael Bellinger, said Ramirez had accepted responsibility for violating the law and has been cooperating with the probe. He said that because the investigation is ongoing, Ramirez would have no other comment, "other than to apologize to his family and friends for his involvement in this matter."
Wetherly Capital founder Dan Weinstein said in a statement that when his firm agreed to pay Morris, it had no knowledge that he was engaged in criminal misconduct or was involved in an improper relationship with the comptroller's office.
Weinstein said he was disappointed that Ramirez, whom he called a part-time employee, had "dragged the firm into this controversy."
In the months since Ramirez's secret plea, Morris and another Hevesi aide, David Loglisci, have been indicted on charges that they extracted millions of dollars in kickbacks from companies seeking investments from the $150 billion retirement fund.
One of the firms that made a payment of more than $1 million was the Quadrangle Group, founded by White House auto industry adviser Steven Rattner.
Investigators said some kickbacks were used to reward Hevesi's political allies, including the former head of New York's defunct Labor Party, Raymond Harding, who was also charged. Saul Meyer, of Dallas-based Aldus Equity Partners, has also been charged with helping his firm get a $175 million investment by paying $300,000 to Morris.
Harding, Morris , Loglisci and Meyer have all claimed they did nothing wrong, but a Dallas hedge fund executive, Barrett Wissman, pleaded guilty in March to helping Hevesi aides collect payments in connection with pension fund deals.
In recent weeks the probe has expanded into several other states where Wetherly and Aldus lobbied government funds for investments, including New Mexico and California.
Investigators allege that Wetherly helped conceal payments to Morris by agreeing to an unorthodox arrangement where they were paid indirectly, through Ramirez.
Weinstein said he did not believe the company was obligated to disclose those payments at the time.
Ramirez left Wetherly and joined the Park Hill Group in 2005. Like Wetherly, Park Hill also solicits business for investment firms. It hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing in the case.
The Blackstone Group, which now owns Park Hill, said Ramirez voluntarily left the company in March, saying he wanted to start his own business.
"We found not a shred of evidence that he violated any standard of conduct," firm spokesman Peter Rose said.
