From Motown to lockdown: Detroit bathroom bung IT exec gets one year in the clink

The economy must be really bad in Detroit for someone to risk imprisonment for 30k USD over 7 years.

'behind bars'

"...will be spending the next 12 months behind bars for bribery.

Parimal Mehta was given the month prison term on Monday, along with a year of supervised release and a $10,000 fine".

How does 1 month prison and 1 year supervised release translate to "12 months behind bars"?

Also, $10k fine? As per the article, this guy was paying thousands of $ in bribes, presumably with the intent on getting a far higher rate of return. And if this was going on for many years (before 2013), then at least some of that projected 'ROI' must have already been realised. Given the context, $10k fine on it's own seems rather low, unless this was also accompanied by the city clawing back payments from any contracts they signed with the guy's firm.

Doesn't this happen all the time?

My assumption was that resellers and IT services companies do this all the time...was this exposed because someone got sloppy?

I've worked in large IT organizations with a single-source mom and pop reseller handing all purchases. As in, you can't get a PO approved if it's not through this company. There has to be some sort of bribery, kickback scheme, whatever in place. Government IT positions must be far worse.

Seriously, isn't this just how the reseller business works?