Davis-Bacon Act fraud has resulted in a criminal sentence for the owner of a now-defunct construction subcontractor.
According to a Department of Justice press release, the subcontractor’s owner has been sentenced to four years of probation (including 18 months of home confinement) and ordered to pay $164,627 in restitution, after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to pay employees less than prevailing wages on a federal construction project in Boston.
A large business was appropriately awarded a “Marginal” score for small business participation based on the large business’s history of failing to meet its small business subcontracting goals.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that the procuring agency properly assigned the large business a low score based on the large business’s history of unmet subcontracting goals, even though the large business apparently pledged to subcontract a significant amount of work to small businesses under the solicitation in question.
A procuring agency properly considered the past performance of a joint venture’s two partners, even though the solicitation prohibited the consideration of subcontractors’ past performance.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that where a solicitation only allowed past performance references for the “prime offeror,” the agency was permitted to consider the past performance of two joint venture partners–the entities comprising a “prime offeror.”
A discrepancy in a business’s subcontracting plan may have cost the offeror its shot at a position on the enterprise acquisition gateway for leading-edge solutions II IDIQ contract.
As demonstrated in a recent GAO bid protest, the business was downgraded on the small business participation factor because of a discrepancy in its proposal regarding subcontracting with SDVOSBs. Without the discrepancy, the large business might have landed a slot on EAGLE II.
Five subcontractors and two individuals have paid the government nearly $1.9 million to resolve allegations that they violated the False Claims Act by falsely representing themselves as small disadvantaged businesses.
According to a Department of Justice press release, the subcontractors self-certified as SDBs to their prime contractors, and those self-certifications were then passed on to the government.
Small government construction contractors often have difficulty obtaining required bonding–which sometimes causes them to turn to their subcontractors for bonding assistance.
But what if a subcontractor cannot (or will not) provide the necessary bonding assistance? According to a recent federal grand jury indictment, one California man took advantage of these situations by offering fraudulent bonds–at higher premiums–to government contractors. The man now faces the possibility of more than 30 years in prison.
In a recent case, a federal court held that a procuring agency properly downgraded an offeror’s proposal because the proposal was ambiguous as to how much of the contract work the offeror intended to subcontract.
According to the Court, even though the amount to be subcontracted was small in any event, the ambiguity meant that the procuring agency reasonably questioned whether the offeror understood the requirements of the solicitation.