The FBI's investigation into a series of bribery and kickback schemes in Lafayette and Louisiana, dubbed "Operation Cajun Hustle," started with a tip that a businessman on contract with the Lafayette district attorney's office was shaking down defendants in the pretrial diversion program to make their charges disappear, our media partners at The Advocate report.
FBI supervising agent Douglas Herman, who led the investigation, spent three hours on the witness stand Tuesday in the federal trial of Gary Haynes, 67, an assistant district attorney hired by 15th Judicial District Attorney Don Landry to run the pretrial diversion program.
A federal grand jury in 2024 indicted Haynes on multiple charges associated with the scheme in which he and Dusty Guidry of Youngsville, a contract employee with the DA's office, allegedly steered offenders to the pretrial diversion program and certain businesses that offered classes that were paid for by the defendants. The business owners allegedly agreed to split the money with Haynes and Guidry.
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The Current also is covering the day-to-day happenings at the trial.
By the time Gary Haynes accepted his first $10,000 check from Leonard Franques’ company in January 2022, he had been warned that someone was listening in on another of his alleged co-conspirators, The Current reports.
The text alert came from Dusty Guidry’s father, Ronnie, just days after Dusty’s Dec. 10, 2021, arrest on drug charges in St. Martin Parish: “If you have lunch with Dusty please let him know that his phone and his wife’s are bugged, thanks,” Ronnie Guidry, a local pharmacist, wrote to Haynes.
What wasn’t revealed Wednesday, the third day of Haynes’ federal bribery trial, is how Ronnie Guidry possessed such knowledge or whether he — like so many other observers — was merely speculating there was more to his son’s arrest. As it turns out, according to court testimony, Dusty’s phone had been tapped; his wife’s never was.
Haynes, perhaps better than anyone, understood the implications of a federal wire tap. His wife was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison in 2015 for a different bribery scheme involving 15th Judicial District Attorney Mike Harson’s office, where she worked. The feds wiretapped phones in that investigation as well.
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