conviction | The Contracting Education Academy

November 16, 2018 By AMK

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

March 14, 2018 By AMK

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

February 26, 2018 By AMK

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

January 16, 2018 By AMK

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

November 3, 2014 By AMK

Former Army contracting official sentenced to 4 years in prison in bribery and kickback scheme

In Seon Lim, a former contracting official for the U.S. Department of the Army, has been sentenced to four years in prison for his role in a scheme in which he accepted over $490,000 worth of benefits, including cash payments and vacations, from favored contractors. In return, he helped these businesses obtain millions of dollars in federal contracts.

Lim, 48, of Fairfax Station, Va., also known as InSeon Lim, pled guilty in July 2014 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to three offenses: conspiracy to commit bribery and honest services wire fraud; bribery; and attempting to interfere with and impede tax laws.

Upon completion of his prison term, Lim will be placed on three years of supervised release. He also must pay restitution, including $250,000 to the Department of Defense and nearly $125,000 to the IRS. In addition, he must pay a forfeiture money judgment of $490,262.

Lim is among 18 individuals and one corporation, Nova Datacom, LLC, to plead guilty to federal charges in an investigation that uncovered the largest domestic bribery and bid-rigging scheme in the history of federal contracting cases. Overall, participants in the scheme stole over $30 million in government money through inflated and fictitious invoices.

According to a statement of offense, signed by Lim as well as the government, Lim was a public official until April 2012. The charges involve his activities as an assistant project manager and product director with the Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems, a part of the Army that provides infrastructure and informational management systems.

Until June 2010, Lim resided and worked in Seoul, South Korea. While in South Korea, his primary duties were to oversee and implement communications systems upgrades for the U.S. forces there, which included approximately 10 communications centers and various other special projects at military sites throughout the country. Among other things, Lim coordinated work on a major contract, which, in turn, had numerous sub-contracts.

From June 2010 until his resignation in April 2012, Lim worked as a product director at Fort Belvoir, Va.

In the statement of offense, Lim admits that he secretly used his official position to enrich himself by soliciting and accepting gifts, payments and other things of value from government contractors—totaling more than $490,000—in return for favorable official action. Among other things, the statement of offense notes, Lim received payments personally and to accounts that he controlled; payments for travel, vacation, vehicles, cellphones and cellular service for himself and family members; ownership interests in two companies, and other benefits.

In exchange, Lim now admits, he provided favorable official action on subcontracts obtained and retained by the favored government contractors as requested and as opportunities arose. He also disclosed confidential bid information to the favored government contractors.

“This Army official sold the public trust for a half-million dollars in bribes,” said U.S. Attorney Machen. “Lim is now headed to prison along with many other corrupt officials and government contractors brought down in this sweeping investigation. His fate is a warning shot for other government officials tempted to sell out the American people to line their own pockets that they should think twice. The prison sentences handed out in this case make clear that government officials and business people who corrupt the contracting process put their own freedom at risk.”

“In his role as a federal contracting officer, In Seon Lim betrayed the trust that was placed in him by fellow citizens by taking bribes in exchange for providing favorable action on government contracts,” said Assistant Director in Charge McCabe. “The FBI, with our partners, will continue to investigate and expose fraudulent kickback schemes that tarnish the good and ethical work that procurement officers carry out on behalf of the U.S. government each and every day.”

“The kickback scheme in which In Seon Lim participated disrespected the hard work and dedication of thousands of government employees who are committed to providing honest services in the federal contracting process,” said Special Agent in Charge Kelly. “IRS-Criminal Investigation stands committed to weeding out individuals, who abuse the privilege of their positions as a public official, for their personal gain.”

The court documents provide details about numerous contracts and payments. For example:

Nova Datacom: According to the statement of offense, two former employees of the Northern Virginia company—Alex N. Cho, also known as Young N. Cho, and Nick Park—paid Lim $40,000 in cash in 2007. In addition, Park paid for Lim’s travel, lodging, meals and entertainment during a trip to the Philippines in 2007, and Cho paid for Lim’s lodging, $10,000 cash, and a $1,000 casino chip during a trip later that year to Las Vegas. Lim, meanwhile, agreed to use his official position to recommend the company for a contract valued at nearly $330,000.
Avenciatech:According to the statement of offense, former officials of Avenciatech, Inc., a government contractor based in Annandale, Va., provided Lim with cash payments; payments for hotel stays for Lim and family members, including a trip to the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas; payments to finance the purchase of a 2010 Lexus automobile, and payments for other things of value. One of the officials, Oh Sung Kwon, also known as Thomas Kwon, also assisted Lim in obtaining financing for the purchase of a home in Fairfax Station, Va., where Lim resided following his reassignment in 2010 to a position at Fort Belvoir. Lim, meanwhile, assisted the company in obtaining more than $3 million in contracts.
UEI: Nick Park left Nova Datacom in 2007 and co-founded another government contractor, Unisource Enterprise Inc. (UEI), based in Annandale, Va. According to the statement of offense, in exchange for favorable treatment, Lim was given a secret ownership in UEI. Among other things, Lim provided Park with sensitive procurement information. He also assisted the company in obtaining a government sub-contract worth over $1.1 million.

Cho, Park, and Kwon are among those who earlier pled guilty to charges in the case.

In addition to pleading guilty to the conspiracy and bribery charges, Lim admitted that he failed to report the bribes he received on tax returns for the years 2007 through 2011. He also failed to keep records that would allow him to file accurate records for 2012 and 2013. Lim was sentenced on Oct. 24, 2014.

This content is based on an FBI report posted at: http://www.fbi.gov/washingtondc/press-releases/2014/former-army-contracting-official-sentenced-to-four-years-in-prison-in-bribery-and-kickback-scheme.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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