Lawsuits filed against man linked to Cunningham

By: WILLIAM FINN BENNETT - Staff Writer | Wednesday, October 4, 2006 11:24 PM PDT ∞

NORTH COUNTY ---- What may be his last contract with the federal government has run out. Most of his employees have quit or been laid off. He owes hundreds of thousands in back property taxes on his company's multimilllion-dollar Poway headquarters, a 97,000-square-foot building he is negotiating to sell.

And in the latest blow to defense contractor Brent Wilkes ---- one of the men identified as an alleged co-conspirator of Randy "Duke" Cunningham in the bribery scandal that put the former congressman in prison ---- the Poway resident is being sued by two companies accusing him of breach of contract.

No charges have been filed against Wilkes, and his lawyers have adamantly declared his innocence of any wrongdoing.

Court records show that on Sept. 15, two finance companies filed lawsuits against Wilkes and several of the companies he owns or controls.

One of the finance companies, De Lage Landen Financial Services, filed suit in San Diego alleging that Wilkes had failed to pay about $240,000 in back rental fees for office furniture.

On the same day the De Lage Landen lawsuit was filed, Merrill Lynch Business Financial Services Inc. filed suit in Vista against Wilkes and several companies he owns.

Wilkes' attorney, Michael Lipman, said he could not comment on the lawsuits because Wilkes has not been served with the paperwork.

"We're not going to speculate on something we haven't seen," he said in a phone interview.

The Merrill Lynch lawsuit alleges that Wilkes failed to pay $642,000 in loans he had received from the company.

Attorneys representing the two firms suing Wilkes and his companies could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The lawsuits are the latest problems for Wilkes.

When Cunningham pleaded guilty late last year to his role in a massive bribery scheme, court documents identified four unnamed co-conspirators, two of whom had allegedly provided Cunningham with more than $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for his help in steering tens of millions in government contracts to their companies.

Sources close to the investigation identified Wilkes as one of those co-conspirators, something that one of his attorneys acknowledged to reporters in the weeks following Cunningham's March sentencing. The former North County lawmaker got eight years, four months in custody and tis now in a federal prison in North Carolina.

The investigation into Cunningham's web of corruption continues.

In August 2005, agents with the FBI, the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the IRS raided Wilkes' Poway home and the offices of Poway defense firm ADCS Inc., in connection with the Cunningham investigation. Wilkes owns ADCS.

In December, a short time after sources identified Wilkes as co-conspirator No. 1 in the Cunningham case, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's staff asked Wilkes to resign from the Del Mar Fair Board, a position he had been appointed to by the governor after donating nearly $80,000 to his campaign.

After the scandal broke, Schwarzenegger gave the money to San Diego County charities.

In May, what is believed to be ADCS' last remaining federal contract expired. By that month, the company's headquarters building in Poway was on the market, as Wilkes' property tax bill on the property continued to grow. And as of Thursday, the bill had mushroomed to $321,731, according to county Treasurer-Tax Collector Dan McAllister.

Lipman said the scandal surrounding Cunningham has been "very difficult" financially for Wilkes.

"It has taken a toll on the business," Lipman said. "He is attempting to keep things afloat and move forward."

The Poway Unified School District's board of trustees has given administrators approval to negotiate a land swap with a developer, who would then buy the ADCS building for an undisclosed price and lease it to the district.

-- Contact staff writer William Finn Bennett at (760) 740-5426, or wbennett@nctimes.com.

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