Bribery and Corruption Casebook: The View from Under the Table

CHAPTER 39

Bid Rigging and Kickbacks Under the Bridge

EDWARD J. GAIO

Dylan Murphy grew up in the countryside of Ireland. He came from a well-to-do family that owned several mines, but as a young man he aspired to immigrate to the United States and become a successful engineer. While in his senior year of boarding school he met Susan Ross, the daughter of a wealthy exporter who dealt with many of the mines in the area. After graduating, Dylan and Susan were soon married and decided to move to America to pursue their new life together and attend college.

Once the Murphys arrived in their new country, Dylan was accepted to the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, where he would spend the next four years earning a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. Given that both Dylan and Susan came from families of means, neither one worked while Dylan was in school. In fact, the Murphys tended to come across as possessing a sense of entitlement when around others, which did not make them very many friends. By the time Dylan graduated, the Murphys had one daughter and another one on the way.

After Dylan graduated, the family moved to a small suburb of Denver, where he was offered an entry-level position as a resident engineer for the Regional Transportation District (RTD). Over the next 13 years, Murphy worked at RTD with very little upward mobility to show for it. Dylan thought he was an ambitious person, but he was unwilling to take the necessary steps to make himself more marketable. The ...