Ex-Official Claims FBI Agents|And City Maliciously Prosecuted Him

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - San Francisco's former building inspection manager claims the city fired him and helped arrest him for not assisting vigilante FBI agents in a sting operation aimed at former Mayor Willie Brown.

Augustine Fallay claims FBI Agents David Carr and Bruce Whitten asked him to wear a wire and record conversations on specific issues with Brown and former SF Director of Planning Gerald Green, solely because the Sierra Leone-born Fallay is black, as are Brown and Green.

When Fallay refused for a second time, he said, the agents subjected him to crude ethnic jokes and racial epithets, imprisoned him in his home at gunpoint and harassed and assaulted his family, all with the blessing of some city officials.

Fallay claims Carr and Whitten went after him because of his race and national origin and his refusal to help them - and due to intense media pressure and the desire to correct past failures and finally arrest someone on corruption charges.

Fallay claims the agents dug up an old fire insurance claim involving him and convinced the carrier to give them false information.

Fallay says the FBI arrested him on suspicion of bribery, perjury and insurance fraud and subjected him to a high-profile trial, during which he was fired, after the mayor and district attorney publicly ridiculed him and pronounced him guilty before the trial began. The jury acquitted him on four charges and deadlocked on 29 others, which the judge dismissed.

Fallay alleges civil rights violations, false arrest and malicious prosecution and seeks $10 million in general and exemplary damages and another $1 million in lost wages and medical and legal expenses. He is represented by Paul Utrecht with Zacks Utrecht & Leadbetter.

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