DOJ charged Abraham Cigarroa Cervantes, former finance director of Stericycle’s Latin America division, with two counts of conspiracy under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: one for the anti-bribery provisions, one for books-and-records violations. The charges cover alleged conduct between 2011 and 2016.
Cigarroa and co-conspirators allegedly made hundreds of bribe payments to government officials in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, calculated as a percentage of underlying contract payments. Employees tracked the bribes through spreadsheets, coded them with euphemisms, and recorded them as legitimate expenses in Stericycle’s books. Cigarroa also allegedly submitted falsified Sarbanes-Oxley certifications attesting the records were clean.
The corporate case closed before the individual prosecutions. Stericycle paid $59 million in mid-2022 to resolve parallel DOJ and SEC FCPA enforcement actions. The DOJ puts the scheme’s take at roughly $21.5 million in profits from $10.5 million in bribes. Mauricio Gomez Baez, Stericycle’s former LATAM Senior VP, pled guilty in 2024 and got seven months in prison plus a $250,000 fine.
After charges against Cigarroa became public, he went on the run. His location wasn’t known for months. Records eventually surfaced placing him in Uruguay’s exclusive resort area of Punta del Este. His trail then led to Argentine Patagonia, where authorities acting on an Interpol alert arrested him on December 23, 2025, at the Río Don Guillermo International Border Crossing. He was hiking with his family and had planned to travel to El Calafate.
He’s since been arraigned and pled not guilty. A $1.5 million bond was paid. Trial is scheduled for June 1.
James Okafor