A former City of Atlanta Commissioner of Watershed Management was sentenced today to four and a half years in prison for accepting bribes from an Atlanta contractor in exchange for steering city business worth millions of dollars to the contractor’s company.
According to court documents, Jo Ann Macrina, 66, of Daytona Beach, Florida, served as the Commissioner of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management from 2011 through May 2016. During Macrina’s tenure, the City of Atlanta awarded millions of dollars in contracts to an architectural, design, and construction management and services firm based in Atlanta. Macrina took multiple steps to steer lucrative contracts toward the firm’s joint venture. Those actions included casting aside prior final scores ranking potential vendors where the joint venture ranked near the bottom, replacing two evaluators who previously represented the Department of Watershed Management with herself and Macrina’s employee, and scoring the joint venture higher than all other evaluators during a reevaluation.
In exchange for providing the firm’s executive vice president with access to confidential information and preferential treatment on City of Atlanta projects, Macrina was offered a job and accepted things of value. For instance, Macrina accepted $10,000 in cash, a diamond ring, a room at a luxury hotel in Dubai, and landscaping work at her home from the firm’s executive vice president either directly or through another employee of the firm. Shortly after Macrina’s employment with the City of Atlanta ended, she began working for the firm. Between June 2016 and September 2016, the firm and its executive vice president paid Macrina $30,000 in four separate payments.
In October 2022, Macrina was convicted at trial of conspiracy and federal program bribery.
Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia, Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, Special Agent in Charge Keri Farley of the FBI Atlanta Field Office, and Special Agent in Charge James Dorsey of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Atlanta Field Office made the announcement.
The FBI Atlanta Field Office and IRS-CI investigated the case.
Trial Attorney Jolee Porter of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan P. Kitchens for the Northern District of Georgia prosecuted the case.
