By Staff Reports
A recreation specialist at the Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville admitted accepting thousands of dollars to carry prohibited nutritional supplements into the prison, according to an archived Justice Department record.
Pedro Coronado Jr., then 36 and living in Red Oak, pleaded guilty in November 2006 to one count of bribery of a public official. Coronado worked for the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a recreation specialist at FCI Seagoville.
The contraband was creatine, a nutritional supplement commonly associated with strength training. Although creatine can be purchased legally outside prison, Bureau of Prisons regulations prohibited it inside the institution.
Coronado admitted accepting $1,000 on July 17, 2006, in exchange for bringing creatine into FCI Seagoville and giving it to an incarcerated person identified in the federal record as Bruce Curry.
Four days later, Curry received two bags of powdered creatine from Coronado inside the prison. Curry turned the bags over to law-enforcement officers, according to the Justice Department.
The investigation did not end with that delivery.
On July 23, Coronado approached Curry and offered to bring additional creatine into the institution for another $3,000. The two agreed that the payment would be delivered outside the prison.
Coronado met with an undercover agent posing as Curry’s sister on July 31. He accepted $3,000 from the agent and acknowledged that the payment was for a future delivery of creatine, according to his plea documents.
Federal agents arrested Coronado the following day. A grand jury subsequently indicted him on one bribery count and one count involving prison contraband. His guilty plea resolved the bribery charge.
Coronado acknowledged that accepting money and bringing the supplement into the institution violated Bureau of Prisons regulations and his official duties. He also admitted that the conduct threatened the prison’s order, discipline, and security.
The bribery charge carried a maximum possible punishment of 15 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine. The Justice Department announcement scheduled his sentencing for March 2007, but the archived release does not state the sentence ultimately imposed.
The case is significant because the smuggled substance was not an illegal narcotic. Federal prison controls extend to items that may be legal in the community but are prohibited inside an institution. The corruption offense arose from Coronado using his government position—and accepting money—to defeat those controls.
The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General investigated the case.
This is an investigative series of 10-article series at Crime Inside FCI Seagoville.
