San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is suing a former Department of Public Health employee, her supervisor, husband and a cybersecurity firm over a $1.2 million contract that he said was riddled with conflicts of interest and rewarded the former city employee and company with taxpayer dollars.
According to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court, Heather Zalatimo, a former IT systems engineer in the health department, allegedly steered the agency toward a $1.2 million contract with Fidelis Cybersecurity, a software and services company where her husband, Maarek Zalatimo, was a regional sales manager. The city signed the contract in October 2016.
Herrera said the contract violated San Francisco's conflict-of-interest laws for city employees: Maarek Zalatimo's pay package included a base salary plus commissions based on sales — meaning his wife could have benefited financially from the deal. Herrera's office estimates that Maarek Zalatimo received a commission of about $65,000 from the contract.
According to court documents, the couple filed for divorce in Contra Costa Superior Court in September 2016.
Also included in the lawsuit is Jeff Jorgenson, Heather Zalatimo's supervisor, who signed off on the deal even though he allegedly knew her husband worked for Fidelis Cybersecurity, according to the lawsuit. Jorgenson is the former IT chief operating officer for the Department of Public Health.
Heather Zalatimo, Maarek Zalatimo, Jorgenson and a representative for Fidelis Cybersecurity did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
"The facts here are clear," Herrera said in a statement. "You simply cannot steer a public contract to a company when you stand to benefit financially from that. You're lining your own pocket with taxpayer money. We will not tolerate it."
The city attorney's office wants Fidelis to return to the city the full $1.2 million paid under the contract. The lawsuit also seeks civil penalties against Heather Zalatimo for three times the value she received from the contract, and penalties ranging from $2,500 to $5,000 against Maarek Zalatimo and Jorgenson.
The lawsuit comes several months after the department's director, Barbara Garcia, abruptly resigned after a months-long conflict-of-interest investigation into allegations that she failed to disclose her wife's income from an educational institution, which had been awarded a million-dollar, sole-source contract with the health department.
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