An employee of a government contractor had pled guilty to his involvement in a scheme to overbill a contract administered by the General Services Administration (GSA) by approximately $1.25 million, and solicit and receive kickbacks from a subcontractor in exchange for providing that subcontractor valuable contract modifications.
Elmer Baker of Gulf Breeze, Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the anti-kickback statute and four counts of wire fraud in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Sentencing will be scheduled for a later date.
According to admissions made in connection with the plea agreement:
- Baker served as the project manager for his company on the contract administered by the GSA.
- After his company awarded a subcontract to a construction company for work on the facility, Baker began receiving kickbacks in the form of meals, golf sessions, vacations, and other things of value.
- In or around 2015, Baker began demanding monetary kickbacks that were valued at 10 percent of the amount of each of the subcontract modifications that he awarded the subcontractor.
- Baker sent the subcontractor fake invoices to make it appear as though the payments he was receiving were for legitimate work, and he set up a shell company to receive the payments.
- Additionally, Baker took the subcontract estimates provided to him and illegally inflated them in his requests to the GSA.
- Over the course of several subcontract modifications, Baker defrauded the GSA out of approximately $1.25 million.
Prosecution of his case was handled by the Justice Department’s Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, the nation’s leading prosecuting authority on government procurement fraud and corruption matters.
The GSA Office of Inspector General, FBI’s Washington Field Office, and the State Department Office of Inspector General were in charge of investigating this case.
Ronnie Simpkins of Maryland pled guilty to the charge in December of last year.
Simpkins admitted that, for approximately six years between 2011 and 2017, he accepted cash, meals, and furniture from two Company A officials to use his position to help Company A maintain its GSA Schedule contract. Simpkins admitted to meeting the Company A officials over a dozen times at various restaurants in Northern Virginia, the Company A officials’ residences, and other places, often outside of normal GSA business hours and on weekends. At these meetings, the Company A officials treated Simpkins to meals and gave him cash totaling “thousands of dollars into the teens.” In July 2016, Simpkins accepted more than $2,000 worth of furniture paid for by the officials. Simpkins admitted to taking more than $12,000 in cash and furniture from the Company A officials.
