NEW ORLEANS — The former top plumbing official for the City of New Orleans has been ordered to pay back over $100,000 in stolen fees and serve four years of probation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced this week.
James Arnold pleaded guilty in June to stealing the money. He was charged by the feds in May.
Arnold’s actions were highlighted in a series of reports by WWL Louisiana Investigator David Hammer.
A day after one of Hammer’s reports aired in November 2021, the FBI raided Arnold’s office at the Sewerage and Water Board.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Arnold started the scam in 2012. He had plumbers collect the fees for the permits and had the city issue them, but he pocketed the money.
“The Arnold case is a prime example of the FBI's commitment to drag public corruption into the daylight, no matter how long it takes,” said Douglas A. Williams, Jr., Special Agent in Charge for FBI New Orleans. “Stealing from the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board is by extension taking advantage of the very people who rely on its services every day.”
Arnold was suspended from his job with the S&WB in November 2021 after WWL-TV reported how he and one of the inspectors in his office had been engaging in a web of self-dealing with area plumbers to issue permits and inspect each other’s work.
The reports laid out a complex web of self-dealing, in which Sewerage & Water Board plumbing inspectors, city gas inspectors and contractors use each other's licenses and inspect each other's jobs.