California’s Dunhill Insurance Charged with Municipal Bond Fraud

A California financial products firm, two current executives and a former executive were indicted on Thursday for bid rigging and fraud related to municipal bond contracts, the Justice Department said.

Dunhill Insurance Services Inc, also known as CDR Financial Products Inc, was named in the indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In August, CDR Financial Products was under investigation by a federal grand jury in Albuquerque. It was trying to determine if CDR Financial Products improperly won more than $1.4 million in work for the state of New Mexico shortly after making contributions to political action committees linked to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

The department said the charges were the first to be filed in its ongoing bid-rigging investigation into the municipal bond industry.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky and Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)