More Cunningham goods ready for the block

Auction tomorrow for rugs and doors

7 Jun 2006 // It's not too late to get a piece of the scandal that brought down former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

Two Oriental rugs and three leaded-glass doors that the Rancho Santa Fe Republican received as bribes are to be auctioned tomorrow morning near Los Angeles.

The doors were part of the huge cache of Cunningham's ill-gotten furnishings auctioned off March 23, but the high bidder didn't pay for them, so they're being auctioned again. The rugs were seized too late to be part of that auction.

In pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax charges Nov. 29, Cunningham turned over thousands of dollars in antiques and other furnishings he received from a Pentagon contractor.

The rugs are 2 ½ feet wide and 32 and 39 feet long. The longer runner was used in the Rancho Santa Fe mansion Cunningham bought with bribe money.

Also up for auction are three oak doors with leaded-glass panels. A bidder offered $2,700 for them in March but reneged.

As was the case then, anyone connected to Cunningham or his crimes is not allowed to bid on the items.

The auction is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. at EG&G Technical Services, 2332 East Pacifica Place in Rancho Dominguez.

Proceeds from this sale, together with more than $90,000 collected at the March auction, will go to two agencies that investigated Cunningham's crimes: the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division.

Cunningham admitted accepting more than $2.4 million in bribes from three businessmen. He also sold his Del Mar-area house at an inflated price to one of the contractors, who sold it at a $700,000 loss less than a year later.

That contractor, Mitchell Wade of Washington, D.C., has pleaded guilty to bribing Cunningham and awaits sentencing. A second contractor who Cunningham said bribed him, Brent Wilkes of Poway, has not been charged in a case that authorities said is still under investigation.

Cunningham is in a federal prison in North Carolina, undergoing tests that will guide where the government sends him to serve the rest of his eight-year, four-month prison term.