When federal prosecutors unveiled a bribery scheme last year that originated in the offices of the Baltimore City Department of Finance, they made clear that the city government employee at fault didn’t act alone.

Prosecutors said Joseph Gillespie, a veteran finance department worker and high school football coach, acted in concert with at least one other city employee as well as several accomplices outside of government. On Wednesday, prosecutors unsealed a grand jury indictment that names one of the alleged co-conspirators: A Baltimore County man who owns as many as five properties across the city.

James Carroll Erny, 54, faces one charge of paying cash bribes to Gillespie from 2021 to 2023, federal court records show. In exchange, Gillespie “extinguished” Erny’s financial obligations to the city, including his unpaid water bills. The arrangement may have saved Erny from losing his properties at the annual tax sale, a process by which investors can purchase property liens and sell them back with fees and interest. If the debts remain unpaid, the investors can move to foreclose on the homes.

Erny did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A phone number previously listed in connection with him online was disconnected. Property records show that Erny has owned, and sold, a number of city properties over the years.

Gillespie’s ruse has fueled increased anger over the byzantine nature of the city’s tax sale program, which a 2023 Baltimore Banner investigation found predominantly affects Black neighborhoods and largely bypasses mostly white ones. Housing justice advocates have long decried the process, which they said allows too many vulnerable homeowners to fall through the cracks and lose their homes, sometimes even due to the city’s own mistakes.

Tax sale, though, serves as an important revenue collection tool for cash-strapped Baltimore. It also helps the city take possession of some vacant and abandoned properties that otherwise would be left to rot.

But now that it’s clear the city’s system has been tampered with, advocates have called on the city to remove more households from the tax sale and institute a payment plan policy that ensures more people have a fairer shot of keeping their properties. Mayor Brandon Scott said earlier this year that the proposals require further review by his office.

In February, U.S. Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Gillespie to four years imprisonment, blasting him as a “thief” who took advantage of a government job to rip off taxpayers. Prosecutors said Gillespie accepted some $125,000 worth of cash bribes from 2016 until his 2023 arrest, costing the city more than $1.25 million in revenue. He resigned from the city in 2024.

In court, Gillespie, whose supporters crammed the courtroom benches and appealed to the judge for leniency in sentencing, said he had become frustrated by the tax sale system and had attempted to “fix it” himself.

“I should’ve left the city a long time ago,” Gillespie said. “I just took it way too far.”

Gillespie had once been flagged by another employee who noticed “inconsistencies” in his work, years before prosecutors descended on the case. But the warnings went ignored, prompting some city leaders to call for increased spending on internal systems and security upgrades.

Meanwhile, prosecutors admitted during Gillespie’s sentencing that they knew as early as 2016 that he was conducting a bribery scheme. Bennett rebuked them for allowing the ruse to go on as long as it did, eventually acknowledging that cases sometimes take years to build.

Federal court records said Erny paid Gillespie more than $10,000 in bribes, but they do not specify the exact amount in question. Kelly O. Hayes, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, said in a Wednesday news release that prosecutors worked in tandem with the FBI and the Baltimore County Police Department.

Gillespie pleaded guilty last year to a separate case involving a fraudulently obtained COVID-19 relief loan. In addition to his four-year sentence, he was ordered to pay restitution and spend three years on supervised probation.