Man pleads guilty to attempting to bribe a juror in the case of a former boxer
A man accused of trying to bribe a jury with up to $100,000 in the drug trafficking trial of a former heavyweight boxer pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice.
Mustafa Fteja presented his statement in the federal court of Brooklyn, where a plea agreement with the government requires him to serve between five and six years in prison when sentenced on June 23.
Fteja was one of three men charged in November in the plot to corrupt the trial of boxer Goran Gogic.
The trial of Gogic, which was originally scheduled to begin in November, has still not taken place. He pleaded not guilty to violating and conspiring to violate the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.
Fteja has remained free on $150,000 bail since his arrest. According to court records, Fteja already knew a juror described in court documents as “John Doe #1” when he called him several times on his cell phone to meet with him in Staten Island.
Over the course of two meetings during three days, Fteja told the jury that associates in the Bronx were willing to pay him between $50,000 and $100,000 to issue a not guilty verdict, according to the indictment documents.
The investigators said the evidence included several recorded conversations of the defendants planning the bribery plot while speaking in Albanian and English.
