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October 19, 2020 By cs

Civilian agency contract spending reaches record high in FY20

The novel coronavirus pandemic largely contributed to the increase, Bloomberg Government reports.

Civilian agencies’ contract spending hit a record high of $228 billion in fiscal 2020, an increase of 17% ($33.5 billion) from 2019. The surge in spending is mainly due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and Energy departments drove the increase in spending, Bloomberg Government said in a report.  Of the $228 billion, 26% or $59.4 billion went to small businesses, a $6.5 billion increase from fiscal 2019.

“In previous years there’s been single digit jumps, so this is a huge jump compared to previous years,” Robert Levinson, senior defense analyst at Bloomberg Government, told Government Executive.  He noted that there is a 90-day delay for the Defense Department’s contract spending for security purposes and there is also classified spending that will never be released.

HHS, which spent $41.2 billion in fiscal 2020 in contract obligations, accounted for 44% of the $33.5 billion in overall increased civilian contract spending.  The majority of HHS’ spending was for vaccines, research, ventilators and other pandemic-related efforts.  Some of these contracts, such as for a public relations campaign to “inspire hope” about the pandemic and new data reporting system, have drawn concern from Democratic lawmakers.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/10/civilian-agency-contract-spending-reaches-record-high-fiscal-2020/169127/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: contract payments, coronavirus, COVID-19, Energy Dept., government spending, health care, HHS, obligations, pandemic, VA

September 4, 2020 By cs

VA awards sole source contract to upgrade, automate its COVID-19 visualization tool

Contracting officials justified the $1.5 million award by citing a $6 million price tag to fully replace the tool.

The Veterans Affairs Department is using a specific data visualization tool in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and recently awarded a $1.5 million sole source contract to upgrade and automate the software.

VA awarded a contract to Four Points Technology through NASA’s governmentwide acquisition contract Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement, or SEWP, to acquire, integrate and maintain the latest version of Edge Technologies’ visualization tools.

While VA already uses Edge Technologies’ software to visualize patient data, the current tools rely on outdated Adobe Flash players with security holes, among other issues. Under the new contract, VA will be upgrading to the EdgeCore tool, which is based on HTML5 and comes with a host of other improvements.

“This acquisition will provide additional visualization and integration capabilities, eliminate security vulnerabilities related to Adobe Flash used in the current version, enhance 508 Disability Compliance, and provide new robotic process automation features,” according to the award announcement.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/analytics-data/2020/08/va-awards-sole-source-contract-upgrade-automate-its-covid-19-visualization-tool/167965/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, SEWP, sole source, VA

March 6, 2020 By cs

Contracting official sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for role in bribery scheme to rig VA contracts

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs official Dwane Nevins has been sentenced to serve 18 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for corruption offenses.  He took cash bribes and then extorted undercover small business owners so that he could have his “Christmas.”

We first reported on the allegations against Nevins in September 2018.  Then, in January of this year, we reported on the sentencing of a businessman who conspired with Nevins.  Sentencing of one more individual in this case is scheduled later this month.

According to Court records, Dwane Nevins — a small business specialist at the VA’s Network Contracting Office in Colorado — agreed to take bribes offered by co-defendants Robert Revis, Anthony Bueno, and an undercover FBI agent to help them manipulate the process for bidding on federal contracts with the VA.

  • Revis and Bueno, working with Nevins, agreed to submit fraudulent bids from service-disabled-veteran-owned small businesses under contract with their consulting company so that federal contracts would be set aside for only those companies.  As Bueno put it, the conspirators would then “own all the dogs on the track.”
  • Nevins, Bueno and Revis worked to conceal the nature of the bribe payments by either kicking back to Nevins a portion of the payments made to their consulting company, or by asking their consulting company’s clients to pay Nevins for sham training classes related to federal contracting.  At one of those sham trainings in Las Vegas, Nevada, Nevins accepted a $4,500 cash bribe from the undercover FBI agent.

After complaining about not being paid by Revis and Bueno for his participation in the scheme, Nevins used his official position at the VA to extort approximately $10,000 from an undercover FBI agent, telling the agent that “the train don’t go without me.  You know what I mean?  I’m the engine.  I’m the caboose.  I’m the engine room.”  Nevins also told the undercover FBI agent “this is a business and businessmen need to get paid . . . . so I can have my Christmas, you know what I’m saying?”

Anthony Bueno was previously sentenced in this case to 30 months imprisonment.  He was also sentenced to 63 months imprisonment for his role in a separately indicted wire fraud scheme in which he used false representations about investment opportunities to take over a million dollars from several victims.

Robert Revis pleaded guilty in April 2019 to an Information charging him with a single count of supplementing the salary of a federal official.  His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 2, 2020.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/former-veterans-affairs-official-sentenced-18-months-federal-prison-role-bribery-scheme

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, acquisition workforce, bid rigging, bribe, bribery, conflict of interest, DOJ, extortion, FBI, fraud, IG, indictment, Justice Dept., kickback, OIG, SBA, SDVOSB, service disabled, small business, VA, veteran owned business, waste

January 20, 2020 By cs

Businessman who tried to ‘own every dog on the track’ sentenced for conspiring to bribe VA contract specialist

The Justice Department announced in Denver last week the sentencing of a businessman who engaged in a conspiracy with a Veterans Affairs’ contracting official to manipulate contract awards to benefit a consulting company that purportedly represented service-disabled veteran owned small businesses.

Anthony Bueno was sentenced to serve 30 months in federal prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, for his role in a conspiracy to bribe a VA official so that clients of his company would gain an unfair advantage in the VA contracting process.  Bueno was remanded into custody immediately after the sentencing hearing.

The VA’s contracting official, Dwane Nevins, previously pleaded guilty in September 2019 to every count of an indictment charging him with this scheme, including counts of conspiracy, receiving bribes, extortion, and criminal conflicts of interests.  He is scheduled to be sentenced on February 19, 2020.

According to court records:

  • Bueno and his business partner, Robert Revis, agreed to help an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a veteran and small business owner, bribe Nevins, a contracting specialist at the VA’s Network Contracting Office in Colorado.
  • As part of the bribery scheme, Bueno and Revis, working with Nevins, agreed to submit bids from small businesses owned by veterans disabled during military service (one of whom was the undercover FBI agent) under contract with Buenon and Revis’ consulting company so that federal contracts would be set aside for only those companies.
  • As Bueno explained to the undercover agent, the conspirators would then “own all the dogs on the track,” meaning their clients were guaranteed to get the contracts.
  • Bueno, Revis and Nevins worked to conceal the nature of the bribe payments by either kicking back to Nevins a portion of the payments made to the consulting company, or by asking the consulting company’s clients to pay Nevins directly for sham training classes related to federal contracting.

Robert Revis pleaded guilty in April 2019 to an Information charging him with a single count of supplementing the salary of a federal official.  His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 2, 2020.  Bueno pleaded guilty on September 17, 2019.

Bueno has also pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money arising from a completely separate wire fraud scheme in which he used false representations about investment opportunities to take over a million dollars from several victims.  Sentencing in that case, pending before United States District Judge William J. Martinez, is scheduled for January 23, 2019.

The case was jointly investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General, with substantial assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Inspector General.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-co/pr/businessman-sentenced-two-and-half-years-imprisonment-conspiring-bribe-veterans-affairs

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, acquisition workforce, bribery, conflict of interest, DOJ, extortion, FBI, fraud, IG, indictment, Justice Dept., kickback, OIG, SBA, SDVOSB, service disabled, small business, VA, waste

December 19, 2019 By cs

15 individuals charged for roles in fraud and bribery scheme at 2 South Florida VA hospitals

Fifteen South Florida residents have been charged by federal authorities in connection with a kickback and bribery scheme involving employees and vendors of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers located in West Palm Beach and Miami, Florida.

Court filings allege that in exchange for cash bribes and kickback payments, medical center employees, using government credit cards, ordered medical and other hospital supplies through corrupt vendors.  In some cases, the prices of the supplies were grossly inflated, while in other cases the orders were only partially fulfilled or not fulfilled at all.

West Palm Beach VA employees Clinton Purvis, 52, of West Palm Beach, Christopher Young, 44, of West Palm Beach, and Kenneth Scott, 59, of Riviera Beach, as well as former West Palm Beach VA employee Robert “Bob” Johnson, 62, of West Palm Beach, were charged in a single indictment with offenses that include conspiracy to commit health care fraud, substantive counts of health care fraud, and bribery.  Miami VA Medical Center employees Waymon Melvon Woods, 58, of Miami, Don Anderson, 59, of Port St. Lucie, Jose Eugenio Cuervo, 53, of Miramar, Donnie Shatek Hawes, 35, of Cutler Bay, and Robert Lee James Harris, 44, of Miami Gardens, as well as former employee Eugene Campbell, 60, of Miami Gardens, were each charged in separate indictments with bribery offenses.  VA supply vendors Jorge Flores, 45, of Delray Beach, Earron Starks, 49, of Hallandale Beach, Carlicha Starks, 40, of Hallandale Beach, and Robert Kozak, 73, of Boca Raton, have been charged in criminal informations with conspiracy to commit health care fraud.  Separately, Lisa M. Anderson, 48, of Delray Beach, has been charged with making false statements in connection with an application filed with the VA to have one of the vendor companies falsely designated as a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business.

According to the facts alleged in the indictments and criminal informations:

  • The charged employees worked in logistics departments of the West Palm Beach and the Miami VA Medical Centers and were responsible for ensuring that medical and other hospital supplies were purchased and received.
  • It is alleged that at the West Palm Beach VA, Purvis, Johnson, and Scott would place orders for supplies with the complicit vendors that were either fictitious or contained inflated quantities.  The vendors would then invoice the VA for the fictitious or inflated orders.
  • Purvis, Johnson, and Scott would authorize the payment of VA funds to the vendors, who would then kick-back a portion of the proceeds to Purvis, Johnson, and Scott.
  • Purvis and Johnson paid a portion of those proceeds to Young, in exchange for his agreement to falsely enter the supplies as having been received in the VA computer system.
  • At the Miami VA Medical Center, Campbell, Woods, Anderson, Cuervo, Hawes, and Harris each accepted cash bribe payments in exchange for placing orders for supplies with Flores’ and Earron and Claricha Starks’ companies.
  • As a result of these schemes, the defendants caused the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to pay millions of dollars for inflated or unfulfilled purchase orders.

Indictments and criminal informations are charging instruments containing allegations.  A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/fifteen-individuals-charged-roles-fraud-and-bribery-scheme-two-south-florida-va

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, acquisition workforce, bribe, bribery, corruption, DOJ, fraud, Justice Dept., kickback, VA

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