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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

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CDC senior contracting officer sentenced for failing to disclose payments from contractor

As a result of his Nov. 8, 2017 indictment, Carlos Smiley was sentenced to federal prison on Nov. 15, 2018 for making false statements in his annual conflict of interest certification. 

Smiley was a long-time federal employee, having served in positions at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and at DoD’s Army Aviation Systems Command in St Louis, Missouri.  At the time of his indictment, he was a senior contracting branch chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, and the president of the Atlanta chapter of the National Contract Management Association.

According to U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak, the charges and other information presented in court are:

  • On February 16, 2012 and January 7, 2013, Smiley completed Confidential Financial Disclosure Reports required by his position as a CDC Contracting Officer.  Both times, Smiley answered “no” to the question asking whether he had received outside income.
  • Between September 2011 and January 2012, Smiley received several payments from A-TEK, a Virginia-based holding company that was seeking to do business with the CDC during that time.
  • CDC previously granted Smiley’s request to operate a company called Charisma III, Inc. as an outside business activity. After that, Smiley ostensibly received payments through Charisma III for real estate investment advice.
  • In 2012, A-TEK was awarded a single-source contract for the staffing of CDC field stations overseas.  Smiley signed the contract as the approving contracting officer for CDC.  A-TEK turned down the contract after learning of the relationship between Smiley and a representative of its holding company, who was also an A-TEK employee until fired for his conduct.  Smiley failed to disclose six payments for a total of $30,600.
  • In 2015, CDC investigators confronted Smiley about the payments.  He admitted to receiving them and to having invented the Charisma III officer whose fictitious name appeared on the purported agreement between Charisma III and the holding company for real estate investment advice.

Carlos Smiley of Roswell, Georgia was sentenced to three months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. on November 15, 2018.

Smiley was also sentenced to one year of supervised release and 200 hours community service following his release from prison. He was also fined $5,000.

Smiley was convicted of the charge on July 19, 2018, after pleading guilty to making false statements.

The case was investigated by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/cdc-senior-contracting-officer-sentenced-failing-disclose-payments-contractor 

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COR sentenced to prison for soliciting $320,000 in bribes from Afghan contractors

A former employee of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) based in Afghanistan was sentenced on Mar. 8, 2018 to 100 months in prison for soliciting approximately $320,000 in bribes from Afghan contractors in return for his assistance in U.S. government contracts.

Mark E. Miller, 49, of Springfield, Illinois was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release following his prison sentence and forfeit $180,000 and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.  Miller previously pleaded guilty to a one-count information charging him with seeking and receiving bribes.

Miller admitted worked for the USACE from 2005 until 2015, including in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2012, and maintained a residence in Springfield during that time.  From February 2009 to October 2011, Miller was assigned to a military base, Camp Clark, in eastern Afghanistan.  He was the site manager and a contracting officer representative (COR) for a number of construction projects in Afghanistan.

On Dec. 10, 2009, the USACE awarded a contract worth approximately $2.9 million to an Afghan construction company for the construction of a road from eastern Afghanistan to the Pakistani border.  This contract later increased in value to approximately $8,142,300.  Miller oversaw the work of the Afghan company on this road project, including verifying that the company performed the work called for by the contract and, if so, authorizing progress payments to the company by the USACE.

As part of his guilty plea, Miller admitted that, in the course of overseeing the contract with the Afghan company, he solicited from the owners of the company approximately $280,000 in bribes in return for making things easier for the company on the road project, including making sure the contract moved along and was not terminated.  He further admitted that, after the contract was no longer active, he solicited an additional $40,000 in bribes in return for the possibility of future contract work and other benefits.

This matter was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command’s Major Procurement Fraud Unit, with assistance from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Fort Worth Division.  The Dept. of Justice Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s office of the Central District of Illinois prosecuted this case.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-employee-us-army-corps-engineers-afghanistan-sentenced-prison-soliciting-approximately

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Bribes and kickbacks at Joint Base Charleston lead to sentencing

U.S. Attorney Beth Drake announced on Feb. 23, 2018 that Barbara Powell was sentenced in federal court in Charleston, South Carolina, for bribery of a public employee, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 201.   

Powell has been sentenced to 6 months imprisonment, 3 years supervised release, and a $12,500 fine.

The investigation in this case proved the existence of public corruption in construction contracts at the Joint Base in Charleston (JBC).  JBC was formed in 2010 when the Naval Weapons Station and the Charleston Air Force base merged.  As a large and aging military base, JBC hires private companies on a regular basis to renovate and/or build facilities.

Barbara Powell was a Contracting Officer (CO) at JBC, and her duties included awarding and administering construction contracts to private companies on behalf of the federal government.  From 2011 until 2015, Powell solicited and received dozens of bribes from subcontractors at JBC.  The value of the bribes exceeded $15,000.  In return for these bribes, Powell steered projects to some subcontractors to the detriment of other subcontractors, and she forwarded the bid proposals of some subcontractors to other subcontractors that paid her bribes.  Federal COs are prohibited by law from providing confidential pricing information to anyone outside the government.

The case was investigated by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sc/pr/goose-creek-woman-sentenced-receiving-kickbacks

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Former NSA contractor admits to stealing confidential documents

A former National Security Agency contractor at the center of one of several pending leak cases has pleaded guilty to one of 20 counts he faces for removing classified information from the agency and storing those documents in his home for decades.

Harold Martin III, 52, was arrested in August 2016 and later indicted on 20 counts of willful retention of national defense information. According to the indictment, over the course of 23 years working as a contractor for the intelligence community, Martin took documents from the agencies he was working for and kept them in his Maryland home, some of which included top secret and sensitive compartmented information.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/01/former-nsa-contractor-admits-stealing-confidential-documents/144956/

Background on this story can be found in this 2016 New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/20/us/harold-martin-nsa.html

 

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