A Philadelphia contractor was sentenced Nov. 1 to three months in prison, one year of supervised release and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine after being convicted of attempting to bribe an OSHA inspector.
Tony Ren, a contractor who was running a construction site on Philadelphia’s Arch Street project, was convicted Dec. 21, 2021, for attempting to bribe the OSHA inspector to keep multiple safety violations under wraps and eliminate previous violations and fines.
In October 2017, the OSHA inspector conducted an inspection at the worksite in response to an imminent hazard report. During the inspection, the inspector found numerous violations, including:
- debris in passageways
- electrical issues
- holes in the floor, and
- gas tanks with broken pressure gauges.
Ren attempted to bribe the inspector on two separate occasions in November 2017, offering $1,500 in cash in exchange for falsifying inspection results, deleting previous violations from OSHA’s database and agreeing not to report the new violations.
“OSHA inspections and standards exist for a reason: to prevent injuries and protect workers,” said U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero. “This defendant attempted to subvert this system of protections by bribing an official to look the other way on multiple workplace safety violations. This case should serve as a warning to all employers and contractors that our Office will investigate and prosecute fully this type of corruption.”
