The former owner, CEO and president of a defense contracting company who pleaded guilty to bribing a San Diego-based Navy civilian employee in exchange for his help in securing millions of dollars in government contracts was sentenced Friday to four years in prison. Philip Flores, 54, admitted to pr oviding gifts like expensive meals and tickets to major sporting events to James Soriano, who worked at the Naval Information Warfare Center as a contracting officer’s representative. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the cost of the tickets — which included the 2019 Super Bowl and a 2018 World Series game — totaled over $18,000. Soriano, who has also pleaded guilty to federal charges, in turn helped Flores’ company, Intellipeak Solutions Inc., obtain government contracts through the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program. The government paid Intellipeak over $16 million for work on around two dozen government contracts and task orders, and the scheme helped the company make a profit of between $550,000 and $1.5 million, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors also say Flores was convicted in another case that involved defrauding the federal government. While that case did not involve bribery, it did involve the production of falsified documents in order to secure millions of dollars in contracts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Flores was convicted by a federal jury in Georgia of conspiracy and fraud and was sentenced to four months in custody, but an appeal remains pending in the case. During his sentencing hearing in federal court, Flores said there was “absolutely no excuse for anything I did,” while stating that his longtime friendship with Soriano and commitment to his job “severely clouded my judgment and actions during this time frame.” His defense attorneys argued in their sentencing papers that the main motivating factor for the crimes was not greed and that Flores’ actions reflect “a lapse in judgment within the confines of a trusted relationship.” Along with custody, Flores was ordered to pay just over $80,000 in restitution to three companies that prosecutors said “lost time, money and resources in the process of researching, drafting and submitting their proposals on task orders they would not win.” Soriano, who awaits sentencing, also previously pleaded guilty to accepting gifts from another defense contractor, Cambridge International Systems Inc. Cambridge and its former executive vice president, Russell Thurston, also pleaded guilty. Thurston was sentenced in November to 18 months in prison, plus a year of home confinement. ...read more read less