An election technology firm allegedly overbilled Los Angeles County for voting machines used during the 2020 election and funneled the extra cash into a “slush fund” for bribing government officials, federal prosecutors say in a criminal case against three company executives.
Smartmatic, a U.K.-based voting system company, had bribery embedded as part of its business model, prosecutors allege in a Florida federal corruption case against company co-founder Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez and two other company officials.
Prosecutors do not indicate who benefited from the alleged pot of Los Angeles County taxpayer money.
Dean Logan, the county’s top voting official, has acknowledged regularly meeting with Piñate, a Boca Raton resident who was charged last year with bribery and money laundering in the Philippines.
That’s where executives are charged with inflating the price of voting machines and using the surplus money to bribe a top election official who could help them land contracts worth $182 million for the 2016 election.
To secure political favors in Venezuela, Smartmatic employees are accused of fashioning a similar fund to buy a longtime elections official a home with a pool in 2019 as they tried to get a more solid footing in the country, according to an Aug. 1 motion in the Philippine corruption case.
And in L.A. County, where the company won a $282-million contract for the 2020 election, Smartmatic executives used county money to create the same type of slush fund, according to the Aug. 1 filing. The filing raises questions about what happened to taxpayer money when officials awarded what is widely considered the biggest election technology contract in U.S. history.
Prosecutors say they plan to introduce “financial and business records, witness testimony, as well as text and email communications” as proof to bolster their case on Smartmatic corruption as it heads toward trial.
Federal prosecutors declined to comment on the ongoing criminal case.
The case is focused on alleged bribery in the Philippines, but federal prosecutors say they plan to detail similar alleged schemes out of L.A. County and Venezuela to show the bribery fits a larger pattern. According to the Aug. 1 court filing, the company routinely added a surplus charge of between $10 and $50 per machine dispatched to the three jurisdictions to be used for bribes.
“The county has no knowledge or visibility into how Smartmatic USA used proceeds from that contract,” Logan, the county’s registrar-recorder, said in a statement. “The contract between Los Angeles County and Smartmatic USA was competitively bid, evaluated and awarded in compliance with the county’s open competitive public procurement processes.”
The county has found no evidence of the surplus charges alleged by federal prosecutors, according to Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the registrar-recorder’s office. The price of machines always stayed the same, and sporadic surcharges “would not align with the pricing and reporting structure of the L.A. County contract,” he said. No federal prosecutors had reached out to the department, he said.
Smartmatic spokesperson Samira Saba accused the Department of Justice of filling the motion with misrepresentations that were “untethered from reality.” The company stopped working for Venezuela in August 2017 after blowing the whistle on the government and was not trying to return, Saba said.
“Let us be clear: Smartmatic wins business because we’re the best at what we do,” the company said in a statement. “We operate ethically and abide by all laws always, both in Los Angeles County and every jurisdiction where we operate.”
The accusation in the federal corruption case comes as Logan, the longtime department head, battles allegations in a separate civil case that he benefited from an unusually close relationship with Smartmatic leadership. County email and text messages show company staff paid for several upscale dinners, a trip to Taiwan and a jaunt to Los Angeles’ famed Magic Castle.
“The most important things to note are the dress code,” Daniel Murphy, one of Smartmatic’s top people overseeing the county work, wrote in a February 2022 invitation to the members-only Hollywood magic venue sent to Logan’s work email address.
“Dean, please don’t wear your tracksuit,” he quipped.
The show and dinner, where entrees range from $40 to $50, did not appear on his annual disclosure form in which officials are required to reveal all gifts they received totaling $50 or more.
Logan later said in a deposition in the civil case that the dinner and show were exempt from disclosure because he attended in a “personal capacity.”
Those emails and depositions surfaced in an unusual 1,000-page public records lawsuit filed this month by Fox News, whose officials say they need county records to defend themselves against a multibillion-dollar defamation suit brought by Smartmatic.
Smartmatic became something of a household name in 2020, after Fox News falsely reported that the company, along with Dominion Voting Systems, helped rig the 2020 election against President Trump.
At the time, Dominion machines were used in about two dozen states, while Smartmatic was used only in L.A. County. Dominion filed a defamation suit against Fox, which the media company settled for $787.5 million. Smartmatic filed a similar suit in 2021 asking for $2.7 billion.
As part of its defense, Fox News lawyers have zeroed in on the relationship between Logan and Smartmatic and argue the county is holding back crucial records.
Fox News declined to elaborate on the allegations made in the lawsuit.
Logan said in a statement that the county was being used as a pawn in both the civil lawsuit and federal corruption case and said the “voluminous records” the country released “refute the salacious allegations.”
The federal criminal case against Smartmatic executives began under the Biden administration with charges brought in August 2024. The Trump administration put a pause on most foreign bribery cases after he took office the second time but allowed the charges against executives of Smartmatic — a target of the president’s allies — to continue.
The records the county has released to Fox, included by the media company as exhibits in the civil public records lawsuit, do not show any evidence of voter fraud espoused on air by the network’s guests in 2020.
But they do put a spotlight on a local issue: the county’s top election official not disclosing gifts he received from a contractor.
Texts show Logan and Murphy, who is listed as Smartmatic’s top point of contact in the county’s contract documents, enjoyed a close relationship. The men regularly met for meals and coordinated a two-week trip to Taiwan and the Maldives in July 2019, which Logan’s wife, Winnie, joined.
Murphy texted Logan he’d gotten the ticket price for Winnie down from $5,985 to $5,060, according to messages included in Fox’s lawsuit. Logan paid for her airfare, according to a spokesperson for the department.
The trip kicked off in the Maldives, where Logan went for a three-day symposium on electoral affairs. Smartmatic’s Murphy presented at the same conference on the company’s work in the Philippines.
“I will perhaps try to move us so we’re at the same place as you,” Murphy texted on June 19, 2019, as the two coordinated hotel plans for the Maldives.
“If not, we will just catch a boat or Jet Ski over to crash your festivities. LOL,” responded Logan.
Murphy, who left Smartmatic last year, said the allegations by Fox were “consistent with the network’s long history of spreading misinformation and promoting conspiracy theories” and that he had dedicated his career to ensuring fair elections around the world.
“I am extremely proud of the work that I did with Los Angeles County and I stand firmly by my record,” Murphy said in an email. “I maintain without question that every aspect of my work with Los Angeles County elections and voting equipment was fully legal, transparent, and above board.”
The Maldives symposium was hosted by the London-based International Centre for Parliamentary Studies, a good governance group that worked closely with Smartmatic and featured the company’s election systems and executives regularly at its international election events. The center gave Logan an award for his election work in 2017 and a lifetime achievement award in December.
Logan then headed to Taiwan to view Smartmatic voting equipment on a trip fully covered by the company. A spokesperson for the county registrar-recorder said the trip to Taiwan was so Logan could approve the manufacturing process for the voting equipment, which was required under the contract.
Janice Hahn, who chaired the Board of Supervisors at the time, approved the trip, but Logan did not put the travel on his annual disclosure form, according to county records included in the Fox lawsuit.
“We have always trusted Dean Logan to run fair and efficient elections,” Hahn said in a statement. “These allegations are serious and we will be reviewing them carefully.”
The International Centre for Parliamentary Studies covered the hotel and airfare for the Maldives, Logan told Hahn in a June 2019 letter requesting permission for the trip. The cost of the trip to Taiwan, which included business class airfare, lodging and meals, was included as part of the contract, he said.
The Smartmatic contract, reviewed by The Times, makes no mention of funding for an international trip.
Sanchez, the spokesperson for the registrar-recorder, referred The Times to the record retention section of the agreement, which states the county “shall have access to and the right to examine … any pertinent transaction, activity, or record relating to this Contract.”
Sanchez said that part of the contract, common to most county agreements, encompasses “the right to travel” to view the machines’ design.
The L.A. County contract was a hugely important win for Smartmatic, which was popular in Latin America but struggled to gain a foothold in the U.S.
That changed in 2018, when supervisors voted unanimously to award the contract to Smartmatic to build voting machines and administer elections starting in 2020.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger, one of three current supervisors who were on the board at the time, said she’s watching the federal case closely to make sure the county’s “contracting processes uphold the highest ethical standards.”
“I want to be clear: any misconduct or fraud against the county is unacceptable,” she said in a statement. “I will continue to closely monitor developments in this case to ensure that taxpayer dollars are protected.”
Only one other company — CGI — bid on the contract. Smartmatic was the “top ranked, highest scored” proposal, and Logan recommended the supervisors give Smartmatic the contract, according to county records.
The contract with the county — which is estimated to be home to about 3% of the nation’s voting population — marked “a spectacular entry into the U.S. market,” according to a report by Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on election technology. Smartmatic opened a California office and began hiring.
When it came time for the big day, though, the systems faltered. Glitches led to hourlong lines during the 2020 election, and many of the touch-screen machines had to be replaced. The problems were so significant that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked a federal judge to extend voting in the county by two hours. Logan apologized for the “challenging day,” and Hahn asked for an investigation into what went wrong.
Despite the glitches, the county continued working closely with Smartmatic and used the company to administer the 2024 presidential election. Smartmatic brought delegations from the Dominican Republic, Republic of Georgia, Republic of Albania, Indonesia and several Latin American countries to show off its work in L.A., and Logan would write recommendations to election officials in other countries when Smartmatic asked, he said in a deposition.
In September 2023, news broke that the federal government was investigating Smartmatic.
Piñate, one of the three executives who was eventually indicted, flew to L.A. to reassure Logan over a meal at Wally’s Beverly Hills, an upscale restaurant known for fine wine.
“He essentially asserted that the allegations are false,” Logan recounted in a December 2023 deposition. “They don’t have a relationship to the work in L.A. County.”
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