OKLAHOMA CITY — A former general manager of a Lawton hotel and a former Fort Sill official have both admitted their participation in a scheme to defraud the U.S. Army.
Candy Hanza, 50, of Medicine Park, and Alfred Ray Palma, 64, of Duncan, were indicted May 3 by a federal grand jury here on a dozen felony charges.
Hanza was the general manager of a franchise hotel in Lawton from December 2008 through May 2021. Palma was the manager of the Institutional Training Directed Lodging and Meals program at Fort Sill via which he booked hotel rooms for soldiers who attended on-post training.
The indictment alleged that from October 2019 through October 2020 Hanza paid Palma to direct soldiers to her hotel, and that she personally profited through her own scheme to defraud the hotel owners and launder the resulting proceeds. She was charged with money laundering, wire fraud, and paying a bribe to a federal official.
Palma pleaded guilty June 26 to a single count of being the public official who accepted the bribe.
His plea agreement mandates that he forfeit to the government $103,200 he received from Hanza as an inducement to “favor the hotel at which she was a general manager when Palma booked soldiers for off-post training.” Palma admitted that he used the cash to buy money orders from Walmart in $1,000 increments, which he then deposited, along with the checks that Hanza gave him, into his personal checking account.
Hanza pleaded guilty July 28 to a single count of paying a bribe to a public official. Her plea agreement decrees that “the Court must order the payment of restitution to any victim(s) of the offense.” The indictment alleges that between January 2018 and June 2021, Hanza’s personal Endeavor Travel Account received approximately $3.1 million in payments from a Government Purchase Card
Both face up to 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, or three times the monetary equivalent of their crimes. Neither has been sentenced yet.