bribery | The Contracting Education Academy

October 16, 2020 By cs

Former GSA contract specialist sentenced to prison for accepting bribes

A former government contract officer with the General Services Administration (GSA), was sentenced last week to a 21-month prison term on a federal bribery charge stemming from a scheme in which he accepted bribes from government contractors during a six-year period.

Ronnie Simpkins of Maryland pled guilty to the charge in December of last year.

According to the government’s evidence, from 1989 until May 2019, Simpkins was employed by GSA as a Contract Specialist in procurement related positions, and between August 2013 and May 2019. From February 2010 to August 2017, Simpkins was assigned to a sub-division of the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) which oversees the administration of GSA Schedule 70 contracts. “Schedules” are long-term government-wide contracts with commercial companies that provide access to commercial products and services at fair and reasonable prices to the government. “Schedule 70 contracts” provide IT solutions, services, and software to federal, state, and local customer agencies. GSA pre-negotiates the vendors’ pricing, terms, and conditions, to streamline the acquisition process while at the same time providing the best value to the end user agency.

According to court papers, Company A, a Northern Virginia corporation, held a GSA Schedule contract, which it actively advertised to prospective federal agency customers. To maintain its GSA Schedule contract, Company A was required to have annual sales in excess of $25,000 — a requirement that could be waived by GSA’s administrative contracting officer. Company A was also required to pay an Industrial Funding Fee (IFF) of 0.75% of all its Schedule sales. Dating back to 2006, Company A maintained its GSA Schedule contract despite reporting no sales and not paying any IFFs since 2006. Simpkins oversaw the contract dating back to 2009.

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.

Simpkins admitted to using his GSA position to help Company A in exchange for these payments. Specifically, Simpkins recommended and signed Company A’s contracts with GSA, even though Company A:

failed to meet program requirements,
deliberately neglected to notify GSA, as he was obligated to do, when Company A’s contract under his supervision no longer met program requirements, and
advised Company A about ways to avoid contract cancellation despite failing to meet GSA’s program requirements.

United States District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, who presided over the case, sentenced Simpkins to 21 months in prison, followed by one year of supervised release. The Court also imposed a $10,000 fine and ordered Simpkins to forfeit $12,108.91.

The case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office Criminal Division and the GSA’s Office of Inspector General, and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/former-federal-government-contract-officer-sentenced-prison-accepting-bribes

March 6, 2020 By cs

Contracting official sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for role in bribery scheme to rig VA contracts

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs official Dwane Nevins has been sentenced to serve 18 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for corruption offenses. He took cash bribes and then extorted undercover small business owners so that he could have his “Christmas.”

We first reported on the allegations against Nevins in September 2018. Then, in January of this year, we reported on the sentencing of a businessman who conspired with Nevins. Sentencing of one more individual in this case is scheduled later this month.

According to Court records, Dwane Nevins — a small business specialist at the VA’s Network Contracting Office in Colorado — agreed to take bribes offered by co-defendants Robert Revis, Anthony Bueno, and an undercover FBI agent to help them manipulate the process for bidding on federal contracts with the VA.

Revis and Bueno, working with Nevins, agreed to submit fraudulent bids from service-disabled-veteran-owned small businesses under contract with their consulting company so that federal contracts would be set aside for only those companies. As Bueno put it, the conspirators would then “own all the dogs on the track.”
Nevins, Bueno and Revis worked to conceal the nature of the bribe payments by either kicking back to Nevins a portion of the payments made to their consulting company, or by asking their consulting company’s clients to pay Nevins for sham training classes related to federal contracting. At one of those sham trainings in Las Vegas, Nevada, Nevins accepted a $4,500 cash bribe from the undercover FBI agent.

After complaining about not being paid by Revis and Bueno for his participation in the scheme, Nevins used his official position at the VA to extort approximately $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent, telling the agent that “the train don’t go without me. You know what I mean? I’m the engine. I’m the caboose. I’m the engine room.” Nevins also told the undercover FBI agent “this is a business and businessmen need to get paid . . . . so I can have my Christmas, you know what I’m saying?”

Anthony Bueno was previously sentenced in this case to 30 months imprisonment. He was also sentenced to 63 months imprisonment for his role in a separately indicted wire fraud scheme in which he used false representations about investment opportunities to take over a million dollars from several victims.

Robert Revis pleaded guilty in April 2019 to an Information charging him with a single count of supplementing the salary of a federal official. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 2, 2020.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/former-veterans-affairs-official-sentenced-18-months-federal-prison-role-bribery-scheme

February 15, 2020 By cs

State Dept. contracting officer sentenced to prison for bribery, fraud in procurement scheme

A contracting officer with the U.S. Department of State was sentenced yesterday (Feb. 14, 2020) to seven years and three months of imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised release, after he was convicted of 13 counts of conspiracy, bribery, honest services wire fraud, and making false statements.

Zaldy N. Sabino, 60, of Fort Washington, Maryland, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady after Sabino’s conviction on Oct. 4, 2019.

In addition to his term of imprisonment, Sabino was ordered to pay a $25,000 fine.

According to the evidence at trial, between November 2012 and early 2017, Sabino and the owner of a Turkish construction firm engaged in a bribery and procurement fraud scheme in which Sabino received at least $521,862.93 in cash payments from the Turkish owner while Sabino supervised multi-million dollar construction contracts awarded to the Turkish owner’s business partners and while Sabino made over a half million dollars in structured cash deposits into his personal bank accounts.

Sabino concealed his unlawful relationship by, among other things, making false statements on financial disclosure forms and during his background reinvestigation.

The Department of State’s Office of Inspector General and the FBI’s Washington Field Office investigated the case. The Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Virginia prosecuted the case.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/state-department-contracting-officer-sentenced-prison-bribery-and-procurement-fraud-scheme

January 20, 2020 By cs

Businessman who tried to ‘own every dog on the track’ sentenced for conspiring to bribe VA contract specialist

The Justice Department announced in Denver last week the sentencing of a businessman who engaged in a conspiracy with a Veterans Affairs’ contracting official to manipulate contract awards to benefit a consulting company that purportedly represented service-disabled veteran owned small businesses.

Anthony Bueno was sentenced to serve 30 months in federal prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, for his role in a conspiracy to bribe a VA official so that clients of his company would gain an unfair advantage in the VA contracting process. Bueno was remanded into custody immediately after the sentencing hearing.

The VA’s contracting official, Dwane Nevins, previously pleaded guilty in September 2019 to every count of an indictment charging him with this scheme, including counts of conspiracy, receiving bribes, extortion, and criminal conflicts of interests. He is scheduled to be sentenced on February 19, 2020.

According to court records:

Bueno and his business partner, Robert Revis, agreed to help an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a veteran and small business owner, bribe Nevins, a contracting specialist at the VA’s Network Contracting Office in Colorado.
As part of the bribery scheme, Bueno and Revis, working with Nevins, agreed to submit bids from small businesses owned by veterans disabled during military service (one of whom was the undercover FBI agent) under contract with Buenon and Revis’ consulting company so that federal contracts would be set aside for only those companies.
As Bueno explained to the undercover agent, the conspirators would then “own all the dogs on the track,” meaning their clients were guaranteed to get the contracts.
Bueno, Revis and Nevins worked to conceal the nature of the bribe payments by either kicking back to Nevins a portion of the payments made to the consulting company, or by asking the consulting company’s clients to pay Nevins directly for sham training classes related to federal contracting.

Robert Revis pleaded guilty in April 2019 to an Information charging him with a single count of supplementing the salary of a federal official. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 2, 2020. Bueno pleaded guilty on September 17, 2019.

Bueno has also pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money arising from a completely separate wire fraud scheme in which he used false representations about investment opportunities to take over a million dollars from several victims. Sentencing in that case, pending before United States District Judge William J. Martinez, is scheduled for January 23, 2019.

The case was jointly investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, with substantial assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/businessman-sentenced-two-and-half-years-imprisonment-conspiring-bribe-veterans-affairs

December 19, 2019 By cs

15 individuals charged for roles in fraud and bribery scheme at 2 South Florida VA hospitals

Fifteen South Florida residents have been charged by federal authorities in connection with a kickback and bribery scheme involving employees and vendors of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers located in West Palm Beach and Miami, Florida.

Court filings allege that in exchange for cash bribes and kickback payments, medical center employees, using government credit cards, ordered medical and other hospital supplies through corrupt vendors. In some cases, the prices of the supplies were grossly inflated, while in other cases the orders were only partially fulfilled or not fulfilled at all.

West Palm Beach VA employees Clinton Purvis, 52, of West Palm Beach, Christopher Young, 44, of West Palm Beach, and Kenneth Scott, 59, of Riviera Beach, as well as former West Palm Beach VA employee Robert “Bob” Johnson, 62, of West Palm Beach, were charged in a single indictment with offenses that include conspiracy to commit health care fraud, substantive counts of health care fraud, and bribery. Miami VA Medical Center employees Waymon Melvon Woods, 58, of Miami, Don Anderson, 59, of Port St. Lucie, Jose Eugenio Cuervo, 53, of Miramar, Donnie Shatek Hawes, 35, of Cutler Bay, and Robert Lee James Harris, 44, of Miami Gardens, as well as former employee Eugene Campbell, 60, of Miami Gardens, were each charged in separate indictments with bribery offenses. VA supply vendors Jorge Flores, 45, of Delray Beach, Earron Starks, 49, of Hallandale Beach, Carlicha Starks, 40, of Hallandale Beach, and Robert Kozak, 73, of Boca Raton, have been charged in criminal informations with conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Separately, Lisa M. Anderson, 48, of Delray Beach, has been charged with making false statements in connection with an application filed with the VA to have one of the vendor companies falsely designated as a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business.

According to the facts alleged in the indictments and criminal informations:

The charged employees worked in logistics departments of the West Palm Beach and the Miami VA Medical Centers and were responsible for ensuring that medical and other hospital supplies were purchased and received.
It is alleged that at the West Palm Beach VA, Purvis, Johnson, and Scott would place orders for supplies with the complicit vendors that were either fictitious or contained inflated quantities. The vendors would then invoice the VA for the fictitious or inflated orders.
Purvis, Johnson, and Scott would authorize the payment of VA funds to the vendors, who would then kick-back a portion of the proceeds to Purvis, Johnson, and Scott.
Purvis and Johnson paid a portion of those proceeds to Young, in exchange for his agreement to falsely enter the supplies as having been received in the VA computer system.
At the Miami VA Medical Center, Campbell, Woods, Anderson, Cuervo, Hawes, and Harris each accepted cash bribe payments in exchange for placing orders for supplies with Flores’ and Earron and Claricha Starks’ companies.
As a result of these schemes, the defendants caused the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to pay millions of dollars for inflated or unfulfilled purchase orders.

Indictments and criminal informations are charging instruments containing allegations. A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/fifteen-individuals-charged-roles-fraud-and-bribery-scheme-two-south-florida-va

A former government contract officer with the General Services Administration (GSA), was sentenced last week to a 21-month prison term on a federal bribery charge stemming from a scheme in which he accepted bribes from government contractors during a six-year period.

Fifteen South Florida residents have been charged by federal authorities in connection with a kickback and bribery scheme involving employees and vendors of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers located in West Palm Beach and Miami, Florida.

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