A federal judge Thursday sentenced a former Regional Transportation District senior manager to 18 months in prison for his conviction on bribery charges in a case that had reverberations at Denver’s City Hall.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger also ordered Kenneth Hardin, 62, to serve three years of unsupervised release after his prison term and to pay a $4,000 forfeiture money judgment.
A cooperating witness for prosecutors, to capture video and audio recordings of Hardin accepting bribes from Ward for contract renewals.
Ward also went undercover to record Larry Stevenson, a former supervisor in Denver city government ‘s, accepting money while pledging to use his influence with the mayor to obtain a parking contract for Ward at Denver International Airport.
That parking contract was never awarded, and Hancock has denounced the actions of Stevenson, whom he has said acted without his knowledge.
After a three-day trial, Hardin, who was paid $117,285 annually in his RTD job, was convicted of three counts related to accepting bribes from Ward in exchange for influence on contracts and contract renewals at RTD for the Access-a-Ride program. in Denver District Court to two misdemeanor conflict-of-interest charges in August and was sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation.
The recordings captured Hardin taking bribes from May through September 2014, which led to convictions that he had accepted a total of $4,000 in bribes.
