NEW ORLEANS — A federal indictment last month charged the area’s leading building inspection firm, IECI & Associates, and its owner, Randy Farrell, with bribing New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and her top staff so Farrell and his firm could allegedly falsify hundreds of electrical permits and inspections.
Beyond the attention-grabbing headlines about the mayor, federal prosecutors focus on how Farrell and IECI’s alleged scheme might have affected the safety of electrical work inside hundreds of people’s homes.
Starting in 2018 and continuing until late last year, Farrell and IECI “submitted … at least hundreds of fraudulent permit applications for unlicensed electricians who paid Farrell bribes and corresponding fraudulent inspection reports,” the indictment alleges.
The indictment lays out several examples, including one renovation project in 2018, where “the general contractor hired an unlicensed electrician who used Farrell to obtain a fraudulent permit.” The indictment goes on to allege that the homeowner saw “electrical connections that were unsafe and did not meet electrical code” and confronted Farrell about it, but “Farrell and IECI fraudulently caused the property to pass its electrical inspection.”
Allegations like that are now raising concerns for homeowners whose renovation or construction projects were inspected and approved as safe by IECI.
Dr. Christopher Marrero and his wife Shannon wanted to build their dream home on the New Orleans lakefront, but they say they got something that was far from what they dreamed – or even what was on the architectural plans for the project.
Some of the Marreros’ complaints were about cosmetic issues or inconveniences, such as uneven molding around a chandelier, a door that didn’t close properly, or soffits made of vinyl rather than Hardie board. Such disputes between homeowners and contractors are common and hardly newsworthy.
But Dr. Marrero grew concerned when his family moved in and found problems that other building professionals told him were violations of the construction safety codes. He became even more worried when he learned about the recent felony charges against IECI; the inspections that led the city of New Orleans to issue a certificate of occupancy for his home had been conducted by IECI.
Marrero describes the twisted mishmash of HVAC ductwork in the attic as an “octopus,” including sharp turns that go way past a 90-degree angle. He found one fan vent from a bathroom that opens into the attic, rather than venting outside.
IECI inspector Kurt Cavalier said it was all up to code, including a gas shutoff valve inside a fireplace. Marrero questioned how that could be, given that once the fireplace is lit, the only way to shut off the gas would be to reach into the fire to turn the valve.
Ryan Luminais, an attorney for the Marreros’ contractor, Creative Builders, said the Marreros moved in before the contractor could complete five or six final items, and “there have been no violations of the code of ordinances (identified) by the city of New Orleans in connection with that property.”
What's more, Luminais said the Marreros invoked arbitration to settle their dispute with Creative Builders, then filed a lawsuit against the company over the same dispute. He called that “a smear campaign” and “an effort by the Marreros to pursue their claims in the court of public opinion as opposed to arbitration, which is the legal process that they agreed to in their contract.”
Around the same time Creative Builders was building the Marreros’ house, the contractor started building a new dream home for Lindsey Satterlee and her husband in Metairie, on the same lot where her childhood house had been.
“And it’s basically just turned into a nightmare at this point,” Satterlee said.
Like at the Marrero house, the rough-in electrical work at the Satterlees' home had been approved by IECI.
Like the Marreros, Lindsey Satterlee started by noticing aesthetic issues. But unlike the Marreros, she stopped the contractor from working on the project before he started closing in walls. Luminais alleges the Satterlees violated their contract with Creative Builders by locking the contractor out while he was still working, in December 2022.
Six months later, in July 2023, Jefferson Parish sent its own code inspector to review Creative’s work and identified several code violations, including missing rafter supports, ceiling joists running the wrong way, and sagging beams.
“Any violations that may have been issued or noted by Jefferson Parish were after -- long after -- Creative was blocked access to the property or allowed an opportunity to complete any minor punch-list items, which were the subject of the violations,” Luminais said.
Satterlee said she’s already spent $650,000 on the project and has quotes from new contractors that would run another $700,000 to $825,000. In August, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office arrested Creative Builders’ owner, Adam Bertuglia, on suspicion of contractor fraud and two counts of injuring public records, setting losses from the suspected fraud at more than $1 million.
Luminais declined to comment on Bertuglia's arrest, and the district attorney has not decided whether to file formal charges. But Luminais said it's the Satterlees and Marreros who have made false claims because they owe his client large amounts of money. He said the civil disputes between his client and the homeowners are supposed to be settled confidentially through arbitration.
Bertuglia’s arrest in Metairie doesn’t appear to have anything to do with IECI’s role in approving the electrical work there, and there are no allegations that IECI fabricated permits or inspections on any of Creative Builders’ projects.
But investigations that have questioned the legitimacy of IECI’s inspections for more than a decade have done little to diminish the dominance of Farrell’s firm. Former New Orleans Safety & Permits Director Jared Munster told WWL Louisiana that he was briefed on an investigation of IECI’s inspections when he took over the department in 2012.
In 2019, Zach Smith, who took over the department from Munster in 2018, discovered another IECI inspector, James Mohamad, had filed inspection reports for various properties by using photographs from a different property. Farrell defended Mohamad, claiming it was a technical error, but Smith banned him from doing any more inspections in the city. Later, Mohamad pleaded guilty to a federal bribery scheme where he falsified permits and inspections.
When the city of New Orleans did an internal audit of inspections in 2021, it found Cavalier, the inspector on the Marrero and Satterlee properties, was using a single photograph from a single apartment to show he had personally inspected dozens of other apartments in the same complex. Farrell, again, defended the practice.
In 2022, Jefferson Parish charged Farrell and another IECI inspector, Larry Chan, with filing falsified inspections and aiding and abetting contractor fraud.
And yet, even after the company itself was charged in last month’s federal indictment, IECI continues to do most of the third-party inspections on behalf of municipalities and parishes across the New Orleans area. Farrell is still a certified building official with the Construction Code Council.
The State Fire Marshal’s Office, which houses the Louisiana State Unified Construction Code Council, says the council only maintains a registry of certified building officials and doesn’t have the authority to strip anyone of their certification, even if they’ve been charged, or even convicted, of falsifying inspections.
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