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January 18, 2021 By cs

Former Army contractor executive sentenced for role in bribery and kickback schemes

An former executive of a government contractor has been sentenced for his role in a bribery and kickback scheme where he paid bribes to secure U.S. Army contracts.

John Winslett of Bristol, Rhode Island, was sentenced on Jan. 15th to 70 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

According to court documents and information presented in court, Winslett admitted he paid over $100,000 worth of bribes, between 2011 and 2018, to two U.S. Army contracting officials who worked at the Range at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.

The bribes included cash, automobiles, and firearms.  In return, Army contracting officials used their positions by awarding $19 million in U.S. Army contracts to Winslett’s employer.

Winslett further admitted that he accepted $723,333 in kickbacks from a local subcontractor in exchange for Winslett assigning those contracts to that local subcontractor.

Army-CID, DCIS and the FBI investigated this case.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-government-contractor-sentenced-role-bribery-and-kickback-scheme

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, ACID, acquisition workforce, Army, bribe, bribery, contracting officers, corruption, DCIS, DOJ, FBI, fraud, Justice Dept., kickback, Schofield Barracks

November 30, 2020 By cs

Contractor admits to giving gifts to USDA officials to influence contract awards and obstructing federal grand jury investigation

The former vice president and CEO of Communications Resource, Inc. (CRI), has pled guilty in federal court in the District of Columbia to one count of conspiracy to violate the Procurement Integrity Act and one count of obstruction of justice.

According to court papers, Eric Schneider of Virginia admitted to giving gifts to multiple officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to influence the award of contracts worth over $19.2 million to CRI and another company he controlled.

  • Schneider admitted to giving USDA officials Corvette wheels, concert tickets, PGA tour tickets, meals, alcohol, strip clubs, parking, concierge medical services, prescription drugs, and other cash tips.
  • Schneider further admitted that, as part of the conspiracy, he drafted or instructed employees to draft procurement documents in such a way as to favor the award of a multi-million dollar contract to CRI.
  • Schneider then provided the documents to a USDA official to whom he provided gifts, for use in the procurement process as if they had been prepared by the USDA.
  • Schneider also admitted to directing two of his company’s employees to destroy documents responsive to a federal grand jury subpoena.

Schneider pled guilty in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  A sentencing date has not yet been set.  The maximum penalty for conspiracy is five years in prison and a fine of not more than $250,000 or twice the pecuniary gain or loss of the offense.  The maximum penalty for obstruction of justice is ten years of imprisonment.

The Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Beltsville Field Office of the United States Department of Agriculture, Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigated the case, along with assistance from the Department of Health and Human Services OIG, the Department of State OIG, and the Small Business Administration OIG.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/usda-contractor-admits-giving-gifts-usda-officials-influence-award-contracts-and

 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, acquisition workforce, bribery, conspiracy, DOJ, FBI, felony, IG, Justice Dept., obstruction, obstruction of justice, OIG, Procurement Integrity Act, USDA

November 27, 2020 By cs

CIA awards secret multibillion-dollar cloud contract

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has awarded its long-awaited Commercial Cloud Enterprise, or C2E, contract to five companies — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, Oracle and IBM.

Under the C2E contract vehicle, the companies will compete for specific task orders issued by the CIA on behalf of itself and the 16 other agencies that comprise the intelligence community. The CIA did not disclose the expected value of the contract to Nextgov, but procurement documents issued by the agency in 2019 indicated it could be worth “tens of billions” of dollars over the next decade and a half.

“We are excited to work with the multiple industry partners awarded the Intelligence Community (IC) Commercial Cloud Enterprise (C2E) Cloud Service Provider (CSP) contract and look forward to utilizing, alongside our IC colleagues, the expanded cloud capabilities resulting from this diversified partnership,” CIA spokeswoman Nicole de Haay told Nextgov Friday.

C2E represents the CIA’s next step in cloud computing, having awarded an existing contract — dubbed C2S  —to Amazon Web Services in 2013 to provide a variety of cloud computing services for the CIA and intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency and FBI.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/11/exclusive-cia-awards-secret-multibillion-dollar-cloud-contract/170227/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: C2E, C2S, CIA, cloud, cloud computing, FBI, intelligence community, multiple award contract, National Security Agency

November 25, 2020 By cs

Employee of government contractor pleads guilty to fraud and kickback charges

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.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/employee-government-contractor-pleads-guilty-fraud-and-kickback-charges

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, Anti-Kickback Act, bribe, bribery, FBI, fraud, GSA, IG, kickback, modification, OIG, State Dept., wire fraud

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

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, bribe, bribery, conviction, corruption, DOJ, FAS, FBI, felony, fraud, GSA, GSA Schedule, IT, Justice Dept.

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