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June 16, 2020 By cs

Former DEA official pleads guilty to $4 million contract-related fraud scheme

A former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) public affairs officer, Garrison Courtney, has pleaded guilty to defrauding at least a dozen companies of over $4.4 million by posing falsely as a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

According to court documents, Garrison Courtney of Tampa Florida falsely claimed to be a covert officer of the CIA involved in a highly-classified program or “task force” involving various components of the intelligence community and the Department of Defense.  According to the false story told by Courtney, the supposed classified program sought to enhance the intelligence gathering capabilities of the United States government.  In truth, Courtney had never been employed by the CIA, and the task force that he described did not exist.

To accomplish the fraud, Courtney approached numerous private companies with some variation of this false story, and claimed that the companies needed to hire and pay him to create what Courtney described as “commercial cover” in order to mask his supposed affiliation with the CIA.  Courtney also fraudulently claimed that the companies would be reimbursed in the future for these salary payments, sometimes by the award of lucrative contracts from the government in connection with the supposedly classified program.

Courtney went to extraordinary lengths to perpetuate the illusion that he was a deep-cover operative.  Among other things, he:

  • falsely claimed that his identity and large portions of his conduct were classified;
  • directed victims and witnesses to sign fake nondisclosure agreements that purported to be from the government and that forbade anyone involved from speaking openly about the supposedly classified program;
  • told victims and witnesses that they were under surveillance by hostile foreign intelligence services;
  • made a show of searching people for electronic devices as part of his supposed counterintelligence methods;
  • demanded that his victims meet in sensitive compartmented information facilities to create the illusion that they were participating in a classified intelligence operation;
  • repeatedly threatened anyone who questioned his legitimacy with revocation of their security clearance and criminal prosecution if they “leaked” or continued to look into the supposedly classified information; and
  • created fake letters, purporting to have been issued by the Attorney General of the United States, which claimed to grant blanket immunity to those who participated in the supposedly classified program.

In furtherance of his scheme, Courtney created a fraudulent backstory about himself, claiming that he had served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War, had hundreds of confirmed kills while in combat, sustained lung injuries from smoke caused by fires set to Iraq’s oil fields, and that a hostile foreign intelligence service had attempted to assassinate him by poisoning him with ricin.  All of these claims were false.

Courtney also convinced several real governmental officials that he was participating in an intelligence “task force” and asserted that they had been selected to participate in the program.  He then used those officials as unwitting props falsely to burnish his legitimacy.  For example, he directed his victims to speak with the government officials he recruited in order to verify his claims, having separately instructed those officials exactly what to say.  Courtney thereby created the false appearance to the victims that the government officials had independently validated his story, when in fact the officials merely were echoing the false information fed to them by Courtney.  At times, Courtney also convinced those officials to meet with victims inside secure government facilities, thereby furthering the false appearance of authenticity.

Through the scheme, Courtney also fraudulently gained a position working as a private contractor for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC), a branch of NIH that provides acquisition support services to federal agencies.  Once he had installed himself at NITAAC, Courtney gained access to sensitive, nonpublic information about the procurements of other federal agencies being supported by NITAAC.   Courtney thereafter used that information to attempt to corrupt the procurement process by steering the award of contracts to companies where he was then also on the payroll, and used the false pretext of national security concerns to warp the process by preventing full and open competition.

Courtney’s sentencing has been scheduled for Oct. 23, 2020.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-dea-official-pleads-guilty-elaborate-4-million-fraud-scheme

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, CIA, DEA, fraud, misrepresentation, NIH, NITAAC

June 11, 2020 By cs

Could NITAAC’s $40 billion governmentwide IT contract be a boon for small businesses?

The National Institute of Health’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) has about two years to award its next great governmentwide acquisition contract called CIO-SP4.

While this may seem like a lot of time, NITAAC already is getting comments back on its draft solicitation.

Keith Johnson, the contracting lead for the CIO-SP3 and CIO-SP4 vehicles for NITAAC, said industry feedback was due back to his organization by May 15 and he expects the final solicitation for the $40 billion IT products and services GWAC to be more responsive to small businesses and agency customers alike.

“The draft has a direction in terms of some items that we would like to change, but all of that is preliminary,” Johnson said in an interview with Federal News Network. “For example, we would like to go to one GWAC. Currently we have a small business GWAC and an unrestricted GWAC, and the scope of both of those contracts mirror each other. There are a number of reasons why we would like to do that. Most notably, as a benefit to our small business owners.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contractsawards/2020/06/could-nitaacs-40b-governmentwide-it-contract-be-a-boon-for-small-businesses/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: CIO-SP4, GWAC, Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center, IT, National Institutes of Health, NIH, NITAAC, set-aside, small business

March 18, 2020 By cs

Acquisition contracts key to agencies opening telework options in face of coronavirus

There’s good news and bad news for agencies looking to ramp up telework in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal contracting experts.
According to the CDC, a novel coronavirus was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. It is formally named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The good news is federal acquisition contracts are set up for quick acquisition of essential telework equipment, such as laptops or tablets, said acquisition experts FCW spoke with.

The bad news could be that online scammers are watching the expanding tele-workforce with great interest.

The emphasis on agency telework is growing, and although most agency employees are already assigned computers, there may be some hardware gaps to fill as workforces move to remote locations.

Federal governmentwide acquisition contracts, such as NASA’s Services for Enterprise-Wide Procurement, the General Services Administration’s ordering schedule and the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) are set up to help quickly fill laptops, tablets and other IT commodity orders, they said.

Keep reading this article at: https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2020/03/11/coronavirus-telework-procurement-hardware.aspx

The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized.  Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition workforce, capacity, coronavirus, COVID-19, GSA, GWAC, industry, IT, NASA, NITAAC, technology, telework

December 28, 2018 By AMK

$110,000 settlement reached with tech company and CEO to resolve allegations of false claims on Defense contract

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado, has announced that Progressive Technology Federal Systems, Inc. and its Chief Executive Officer have paid a combined $110,000 to settle allegations that the corporation and its CEO made false statements concerning a consultant’s security clearance and failed to disclose an organizational conflict of interest when bidding on a defense procurement contract. 

One way federal government agencies can buy information technology services is by working with the National Institutes of Health’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC).   NITAAC is a government-wide program that enables agencies to contract for information technology.  Other federal agencies, including the military, regularly work with NITAAC.

The United States’ allegations relate to a project in which NITAAC was used by the Army and the Air Force for a contract that was awarded to Progressive Technology Federal Systems, Inc. (PTFS).   The United States contends that in 2014, PTFS’s President and CEO, John Yokley, participated in preparing project specifications for a contract to be issued by NITAAC.  The project then was offered by NITAAC for contract bids.  PTFS then submitted its own proposal to take on the contract.  In doing so, however, PTFS stated that it had no conflict of interest relating to the contract.  This statement was false because PTFS had a conflict in that Mr. Yokley had provided input on project specifications that were included in the contract, thereby gaining a competitive advantage for PTFS.  In addition, the project required security clearances, and PTFS falsely stated in its proposal that an individual who would participate in the project as a key “Subject Matter Expert” had an active Top Secret clearance.  PTFS was awarded the contract.  Funding for the contract was later terminated before PTFS could invoice more than $30,000.  The United States claimed that this conduct violated the False Claims Act.

The claims settled by this agreement are allegations.  In entering into this civil settlement, PTFS and Mr. Yokley did not admit liability.  Under the agreement, PTFS paid $65,000, and Mr. Yokley paid $45,000, to resolve the allegations.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/us-attorney-announces-110000-settlement-tech-company-and-its-ceo-resolve-allegations

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Air Force, Army, competitive advantage, conflict of interest, DoD, DOJ, false claims, information technology, IT, Justice Dept., NITAAC

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