Infamous 'NOLA No Call' game at center of Cantrell bribery probe, sources say

NEW ORLEANS — For Saints fans, the NFC Championship Game on Jan. 20, 2019, was the scene of a crime – the infamous “NOLA No Call” that robbed the home team of a second trip to the Super Bowl.

But for federal prosecutors, the coveted tickets to that game could be evidence in an actual criminal investigation of the city’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell.Sources tell WWL Louisiana that Cantrell received tickets to that game from Randy Farrell, a businessman who later got the mayor to fire a city official who had been investigating him and his associates for shady dealings.In August 2019, Cantrell fired Jennifer Cecil, the deputy director of the city’s Safety and Permits Department, short-circuiting her effort to expose Farrell for allegedly falsifying city electrical permits and inspecting his own work.Farrell’s company, IECI, could have lost millions of dollars if Cecil’s investigation had prevented IECI from doing safety inspections for building and electrical contractors in New Orleans. WWL Louisiana first reported in March that federal investigators were zeroing in on Cecil’s firing, but at that point, it wasn’t clear if the mayor had received anything of value in return. Now, several sources confirm that prosecutors have evidence that Farrell gave Cantrell gifts, including the NFC Championship Game tickets, a top-of-the-line new smartphone and meals.Proving that Cantrell got something of value would be critical for prosecutors to bring bribery charges.“They can be things like tickets. They can be things like meals, and other things of value,” said Matt Chester, a former federal prosecutor. “As long as it has value, it can satisfy that quo in the in the quid pro quo.”Time to file those charges could also be running out. Documents show Cecil was fired in August 2019, meaning a five-year deadline to file bribery charges could be approaching next month.But sources say the gifts continued after August 2019.Farrell was business partners with another big Cantrell supporter, convicted felon Fouad Zeton.Sources say Zeton used Farrell's money to buy Cantrell a top-of-the-line smartphone shortly after Cecil was fired.Last December, Cantrell denied wrongdoing in an interview with WWL Louisiana.“I've never had any conversations with anyone, Randy Farrell or anyone else, relative to who I need to put in place in leadership to make it easy for anybody,” she said.However, public records and secret recordings show that Cantrell had conversations with Farrell and his associates about getting rid of Cecil before she was fired.Sources tell WWL Louisiana that Farrell took Cantrell to a fancy lunch in mid-August 2019. Farrell confirmed in an email last year that he asked Cantrell “to (l)ook into Jennifer Cecil's (t)oxic environment at Safety and Permits and she chose to remove her.”City emails from Aug. 15, 2019, show Cantrell calling for a meeting with Safety and Permits staff. An invitation to that meeting was immediately forwarded to Farrell by Larry Chan, a former city building official who also worked with Farrell as a private inspector and electrician.And a few days later, a secret recording obtained by WWL Louisiana shows that Chan again pressed Cantrell about Cecil.“So, since Jennifer Cecil, is the backbone of charging me with things, and the directors, both directors, signed off on it, who … do I go to if I want to speak against her?” Chan asked Cantrell on Aug. 19, 2019.Cantrell responded by asking if the department had what it needed to “fill leadership gaps should they come open” to run the OneStop permitting app that Cecil was running at the time.Three days after that recording, records show Cecil was fired.Farrell pled guilty in a separate federal tax fraud case in December 2021, admitting, among other financial crimes, that he concealed a quarter million dollars in income he got from IECI. He was sentenced to probation and has paid back more than $1 million to the federal government, his attorney Rick Simmons said.Simmons declined to comment on the new allegations against his client or the possibility that new federal charges could be filed. Zeton’s attorney, Dave Courcelle, also declined to comment.Cantrell’s criminal defense attorney, Eddie Castaing, did not respond to a request for comment.