WASHINGTON, D.C. - An Oklahoma man has agreed to plead guilty to mail fraud in a scheme to defraud the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System of $55,000, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division said today.

The Department said Brinton Lang of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and others agreed to increase fraudulently the price of a structural steel contract his company, Sunbelt Steel Co. Inc. of Tulsa, received for the renovation of the Ward Parkway Shopping Center in Kansas City, Missouri, from November 1989 until July 1991. The retirement system was the primary owner of Ward Parkway.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kansas, the Department said Lang split the $55,000 between himself and his co-conspirators. A co-conspirator was paid approximately $36,000 by mail.

Assistant Attorney General Anne K. Bingaman said the charges arose from a federal grand jury investigation in Kansas City, Kansas. The investigation has resulted in charges against three others and a company over the last year. The defendants have pled guilty to antitrust violations.

The investigation is being conducted by the Division's Chicago Field Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Kansas City, Missouri, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney's office in Kansas and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in Topeka, Kansas.

Lang has agreed to cooperate in the Department's ongoing investigation into criminal activity on the Ward Parkway Shopping Center renovation project and in the construction industry in Kansas and Missouri.

The maximum penalty for an individual convicted of mail fraud is five years incarceration and a fine that is the largest of $250,000, twice the gross pecuniary gain the defendant derived from the crime or twice the gross loss caused to the victims of the crime.

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