A federal judge has sentenced a Maryland man to 42 months in prison for fraudulently obtaining contracts under the 8(a) Program.
According to a Department of Justice press release, after Vernon J. Smith III serves his prison sentence, he will be subject to three years of supervised release. And on top of the prison sentence, the federal judge ordered Smith to pay more than $7 million in restitution and forfeiture.
A Maryland man has pleaded guilty in an 8(a) fraud case involving a company that received more than $52 million in 8(a) contracts to which it was not entitled.
According to a Department of Justice press release, Vernon Smith pleaded guilty to charges that he (not the company’ s disadvantaged majority owner) exercised complete control over the company’s day-to-day management and long term decision making.
An Idaho contractor has been indicted on federal charges stemming from allegations that she fraudulently lowered her personal net worth in order to enable her company to be certified in the SBA 8(a) Program and the Department of Transportation’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program.
According to a Department of Justice press release, the 8(a) and DBE fraud netted the contractor upwards of $9 million–and the Government wants its money back.
A Florida resident has pleaded guilty in an 8(a) Program fraud case that seemingly has it all in terms of small business violations, from affiliation to subcontracting limits.
According to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Michael Dunkel has pleaded guilty on charges of major government fraud, and faces the potential of significant prison time when sentencing occurs this fall.
A proposal submitted on behalf of an 8(a) company claimed that the company had performed a $3 million NASA contract even though no such contract existed, according to a recent report issued by the SBA Office of Inspector General. As alleged in the SBA OIG report, the same honesty-challenged 8(a) company claimed to have 33 employees, even though it never had more than two.
Perhaps it is little wonder that the company in question is alleged to have passed through nearly 100% of its work on several 8(a) set-asides to its non-8(a) subcontractor.
A soon-to-graduate 8(a) contractor submitted a fraudulent proposal designed to evade the 8(a) Program’s sole source limits, with the full knowledge of the procuring agency in question, according to a decision issued by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
As described in Veridyne Corporation v. United States, No. 06-150C (Fed.Cl. 2012),Veridyne Corporation greatly underestimated the cost of a contract in order to slip it under the 8(a) Program’s sole source threshold, but the scheme eventually collapsed, leaving Veridyne liable for false claims and procurement fraud–and leaving the procuring agency in question with egg on its face and a lot of explaining to do.