Archive

September 20, 2018

The Texas A&M Research Foundation (TAMRF) has agreed to pay $750,00 to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by charging various federal agencies for grant-related expenses not qualified to be paid under the rules of the grants. According to a whistleblower lawsuit filed by an undisclosed number of current employees, TAMRF's improper charges ranged from overstating salaries, to inflating expenses, to expenses for completely unrelated subjects and unapproved persons. Some of the agencies affected include the Department of Education (ED), Department of Energy (DOE), NASA, National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Transportation (DOT). USAO SDTX

September 19, 2018

A nonprofit organization and its management company have agreed to pay $528,575.82 to settle False Claims Act-based allegations of grant fraud in connection with the Department of Justice's National Justice Information Sharing Initiative. In applying for grants, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, Inc. (NASCIO) allegedly failed to follow rules requiring the disclosure of conflicts of interest relating to American Management Resources, Inc. (AMR), which if disclosed would have disqualified NASCIO from receiving any grants. USAO EDKY

September 17, 2018

A father and son duo have been sentenced to decades in prison and are to pay over $1 million in restitution for defrauding small businesses, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Small Business Administration (SBA). After being hired to help small businesses win contracts with the USDA, father Joseph Glenn Osborne, Sr. allegedly stole over half a million dollars paid to his clients and used the money to buy himself a mansion. Father and son then conspired with others to fraudulently win contracts with the same agency for son Joseph Glenn Osborne, II's business, and were awarded five contracts worth over $4 million. After the contracts were terminated for default—and company funds were used to fund renovations for the aforementioned mansion and extravagant nights out—they attempted to fraudulently win contracts with the SBA. USAO SDCA

September 10, 2018

Michael Brian Anderson, a shrimper and fisherman, has been sentenced to 77 months in prison for defrauding Customs & Border Protection (CBP), after earlier being convicted of false statements, mail fraud, and money laundering. Under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (CDSOA), federal subsidies are made available to American shrimpers to offset revenue lost to competitors in the global marketplace. As a domestic shrimper, Anderson was eligible to apply for the subsidies but fraudulently inflated his expenses to more than $24 million for a two year period. He then received $800,00 in subsidies, which he used to purchase boats, real estate, and stocks. In addition to his prison sentence, he is now due to pay restitution to CBP for $818,234. USAO SDGA

September 6, 2018

Two copycat military website operators—Sunkey Publishing, Inc. and Fanmail.com, LLC—have settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for violating the FTC Act and the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). In addition to deceiving potential enlistees into providing personal information, the operators sold the information to schools as marketing leads, placed illegal telemarketing calls to people on the Do Not Call list, and gave potential enlistees the false impression that certain schools were endorsed by the military. As part of the settlement, they will turn over the websites and pay a suspended penalty of $12.1 million. FTC

August 15, 2018

A Florida landlord has paid $50,000 to end an investigation under the False Claims Act that he improperly charged certain low income tenants whose rents were subsidized by a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program. In choosing to participate in and receive subsidies from the Housing Choice Voucher/Section 8 (HCV) program, Edward Daniel had agreed to charge no more than was authorized by the local public housing agency. Instead, he allegedly charged unauthorized parking fees and excessively high rents, and quietly received double subsidies for overlapping periods from various public housing authorities. USAO SDFL

June 27, 2018

The government settled fraud charges under the False Claims Act against Temple St. Clair LLC for allegations of systematically avoiding payment of customs duties on goods it imported from various countries including Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Italy. Temple St. Clair allegedly perpetuated the fraud by claiming the good it imported were of a lower value than the true value. Other Temple St. Clair employees also allegedly hand-carried jewelry into the United states without declaring it to Customs and Border Patrol. Temple St. Clair agreed to pay $796,000 to resolve the allegations and institute a number of changes to its practices. USAO SDNY

June 11, 2018

Two Massachusetts landlords, Latchmin Nannan and David Nannan, and a property manager, Rhea Nannan, will collectively pay $57,000 to resolve whistleblower Kafer Nevins’s allegations they overcharged low income Section 8 tenants, and thus improperly collected housing subsidies from the government in violation of the False Claims Act. The whistleblower, one of the overcharged tenants, will receive a share of the government’s recovery. USAO MA

June 13, 2018

Venkat Guntpally was sentenced to 30 months in prison following his guilty plea on charges of visa fraud and related crimes.  Guntpally admitted that employment staffing companies that he founded submitted fraudulent petitions to the U.S. government for foreign workers to receive H-1B visas, including by misrepresenting the companies at which the workers would be employed.  ND Cal

May 17, 2018

Hartford, Connecticut-based Community Renewal Team, an action agency that received federal and state grant funding, agreed to settle allegations under the Federal and Connecticut False Claims Acts that it charged employee hours spent on state-funded grant programs to federal grants from HHS, HUD, and DOE, charged an employee’s time to a Head Start grant when that employee was working on other programs, and failed to stop a program manager from misappropriating $18,500 for her person use; the agency will pay $362,000 to settle all claims. USAO DCT