Dusty Guidry, the architect of kickback schemes involving the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Lafayette and East Baton Rouge district attorney’s offices and others, was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison.
Judge David Joseph of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in Lafayette sentenced Guidry to 48 months on each of three federal charges, to run concurrently, along with any sentence in St. Martin Parish for a December 2021 drug charge.
“Your greed struck at the heart of the criminal justice system” in Lafayette, Baton Rouge and elsewhere in Louisiana, Joseph said before sentencing Guidry. That this was and still is a system ripe for abuse, he added, does not excuse what Guidry did.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Luke Walker asked Joseph for a 70% reduction in the original sentence range of 70-90 months and to consider that he cooperated fully and consistently since the day the FBI approached him.
“I believe he was fully cooperative and honest and I believe he deserves a reduction in sentence,” Walker said.
Guidry apologized to the court, prosecutors, investigators, his family and the community.
“I was in a position to help,” he said, but put his selfish needs first.
Joseph said he would request that Guidry be held in a federal prison nearest to Lafayette. He was released Wednesday and is to report by 2 p.m. on Nov. 14 to the prison selected by the Bureau of Prisons.
Guidry is also to pay a $10,000 fine over time after his release, Joseph said.
In a deal with federal prosecutors, Guidry pleaded guilty in March 2023 to three federal charges: one count of bribery and two counts of conspiracy, one each for the wildlife and fisheries scheme and one involving the pretrial intervention program in the 15th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Lafayette where he was a contract consultant.
He admitted to receiving about $800,000 in kickbacks.
Guidry was “a con man and a good one,” Todd Clemons, the defense attorney for former Lafayette Assistant District Attorney Gary Haynes said in Haynes’ September trial. FBI agent Doug Herman in his testimony agreed.
Fifteenth Judicial District Attorney Don Landry hired Guidry and Haynes shortly after taking office in January 2021. Haynes, who helped with Landry’s campaign, was hired to run the pretrial intervention program and also was a city prosecutor.
Guidry, who is not an attorney, was known in Louisiana as the pretrial intervention guru, having helped various district attorney offices, universities and law enforcement agencies set up programs. When he was hired as a consultant in Lafayette, Guidry also was employed full-time in the 19th Judicial District in East Baton Rouge Parish by District Attorney Hillar Moore.
He had worked there long enough to qualify for retirement in December of 2021 when he was arrested for drug possession. The FBI, which had bugged Guidry’s phone and knew he was addicted to pain killers, arranged with the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office to stop him between Baton Rouge and Lafayette where they found 126 pills in his possession.
On Sept. 11, Guidry testified in Haynes’ trial that he had accepted kickbacks from vendors while he worked in Baton Rouge, including some of the same vendors involved in the Lafayette district attorney’s pretrial diversion scheme. He was not indicted for the Baton Rouge scheme.
A jury unanimously convicted Haynes on Sept. 18 on six federal charges involving the pretrial diversion program.
In that scheme, Guidry and Haynes steered more people with felony and misdemeanor charges into the pretrial intervention program, some who weren’t qualified.
Landry testified that he inherited a backlog of more than 600 cases and asked the staff to clear the backlog by enrolling more offenders in the PTI program where they could take online classes and clear their charges.
Guidry and Haynes loosened the qualifications to enter PTI, accepting at least one two-time sex offender and several people with two or more drunk driving arrests. They had the staff steer offenders to online courses provided by cooperating vendors like Lafayette businessman Leonard Franques. The offenders paid Franques’ company for the courses, which cost a little more, and he shared the proceeds with Haynes and Guidry.
Franques reached a plea deal with prosecutors in December of 2021, wearing a wire and allowing FBI agents to videotape the three men during a meeting at his Oil Center office in January of 2022. Franques is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 21.
The scheme drew the attention of a Lafayette FBI agent in mid 2021 when a Lafayette defense attorney reported one of his clients was being shaken down by someone associated with the district attorney’s office for thousands of dollars in order to make his charges disappear.
That person was Joseph “Big Poppa” Prejean, a Carencro gym owner and ex-convict who provided lectures and inspiration to offenders through his company C&A Consulting. As a vendor with the district attorney’s office, he took kickbacks that he shared with Guidry and possibly Haynes.
The FBI bugged Prejean’s cellphone which led them to Guidry, whose phone they then wiretapped. That led them to Franques and others involved in this scheme and others, including the wildlife and fisheries department and its department head, Jack Montoucet of Scott.
Prejean pleaded guilty in December 2023 to one felony count of conspiracy to defraud the federal government. He is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 21.
In the wildlife and fisheries case, Guidry, who was on the volunteer wildlife and fisheries commission, was more involved in department operations than other commissioners and was close with Montoucet.
Montoucet, as department head, provided Franques assistance in submitting a bid to provide online hunter and boater education courses and courses to resolve LDWF citations. The three men agreed to split proceeds from the endeavor. Guidry testified that he agreed to split his portion with Haynes, who allegedly paid to join the scheme and provided a fake company to hide their kickbacks.