The Border Wall Falls Down
In 2018, Constantine Cannon’s Mary Inman warned President Trump away from his pet border wall project as a surefire target for fraudsters. Two years later, here we are.
Trump’s announced plan to build a wall along the 1,954 mile border between the U.S. and Mexico was a key campaign promise. That plan has now devolved into a series of piecemeal incomplete sections, including some that are privately funded. Tommy Fisher is the owner of Fisher Industries, a North Dakota company with a long history of environmental violations and tax evasion. Fisher enthusiastically embraced the border wall project and chose to build a three-mile section himself, which he calls the “Lamborghini” of walls.
As reported by Pro Publica, Fisher turned this three-mile section of wall into multiple contracts to build sections of the wall, worth billions of dollars. Trouble is that Fisher’s privately funded section is currently sinking into the Rio Grande due to erosion—a risk that was easily foreseen and was, apparently, ignored.
President Trump has tried to distance himself from Fisher’s wall, denouncing the falling wall as “only done to make me look bad.” The White House has not yet commented on what is to be done, if anything, with federal contracts Fisher Industries still holds, despite a Pentagon investigation into yet another federal contract held by the company. The federal government has a number of tools, legal and otherwise, to address federal contractors that fail to meet their obligations. Of course, the most powerful tool in the government’s arsenal remains the False Claims Act if a whistleblower brings forward evidence that a contractor purposefully defrauded the federal government.
If you have any information about corruption in federal contracts, please contact us.
Read more:
- Government Contract Fraud
- Qui Tam Lawsuits Under the False Claims Act
- If he Builds it, Fraudsters will Come
Tagged in: FCA Federal, Government Procurement Fraud,