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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

August 21, 2019 By cs

Former State Dept. employee pleads guilty to procurement fraud

The official had a social relationship with a furniture manufacturing executive, with whom she shared confidential contract information.

A former State Department official pleaded guilty last week to disclosing confidential proposal bids in an attempt to help a furniture company executive win a $1.56 million contract.

In December 2016, Patricia DeLaughter, former manager of the department’s Overseas Office Furniture Program, was working to solicit proposals for furnishing a new U.S. embassy when she and another department official knowingly disclosed the confidential bid prices and design plans of competitors to Steven Anstine, vice president of sales for an Overland Park, Kansas, manufacturing company, according to the Justice Department. Multiple news outlets, including The Post and Courier, identified the company as Bernhardt Furniture.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/08/former-state-department-employee-pleads-guilty-procurement-fraud/159170/

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

November 13, 2017 By AMK

CDC contracting official indicted by federal grand jury

A federal grand jury has criminally indicted a top contracting official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

According to the Nov. 8, two-count indictment filed in federal court in Atlanta, Carlos Smiley, who was a branch chief in the CDC’s Office of Acquisition Services, is charged with not reporting that he had outside sources of salary or other income greater than $200 “when defendant Smiley knew that such statement and representation was false,” the indictment states.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2017/11/10/cdc-contracting-official-indicted-by-federal-grand.html

October 13, 2016 By AMK

Ex-NASA official pleads guilty to lying about contractor moonlighting

A former contract supervisor at NASA pleaded guilty to making false statements about his self-interested interactions with contractors, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday.

nasa Nathaniel Wright, 55, who worked full-time in the space agency’s software engineering division at the Goddard Space Flight Center, acknowledged to a Maryland district judge that he moonlighted as a contract employee for a friend’s small business that did work for several agencies. Wright also helped that business submit contract bids to other agencies during the period of 2009 through 2012 when his NASA responsibilities included work on an $800 million contract, a $450 million contract and a $1.2 billion contract.

According to the plea deal based on the NASA inspector general’s investigation, Wright admitted that he provided his resume to one of the contractors and said that he was looking for a position with their company. He “suggested that he would wait to consider the contractor’s proposals until a position had been considered,” a Justice statement said. “Wright also admitted that he pressed a contractor to use his friend’s business to perform work on a specific task order, even though that businesses had no experience in the area.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2016/10/ex-nasa-official-pleads-guilty-lying-about-contractor-moonlighting/132192

The official had a social relationship with a furniture manufacturing executive, with whom she shared confidential contract information.

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 federal grand jury has criminally indicted a top contracting official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

A former contract supervisor at NASA pleaded guilty to making false statements about his self-interested interactions with contractors, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday.

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