While still working for Detroit’s Wayne County Airport Authority, manager James Warner helped three businessmen secure $43.7 million worth of airport contracts in exchange for more than $6 million in kickbacks. He was eventually caught, and, after a jury trial in 2019, was convicted of several crimes, including bribery, money laundering and theft.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2020, but Warner remained free while he pursued appeals. However in January 2022, he lost his last chance – the U.S.Supreme Court refused to review his case.
The Bureau of Prisons ordered Warner to appear at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan at 10 a.m. this past Thursday, so he could begin serving his sentence. But he never showed up.
A hunt for Warner, age 55, began Thursday night, complete with an emergency warrant for his arrest.
On Friday morning, Federal marshals found his body in the garage of his home in Commerce Township, a suburb of Detroit. He was seated next to a car and a can of compressed nitrogen, as per a report in the Detroit Free Press.
The belief is that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. An autopsy has been scheduled.
“There are no words that I can articulate how I feel about this,” Warner’s lawyer Harold Gurewitz told the Detroit Free Press.
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