Former Executive of Defense Contractor Sentenced to 63 Months in Prison for $30 Million Fraud Scheme

[nitpicker]

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-executive-defense-contractor-sentenced-63-months-prison-30-million-fraud-scheme

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, March 18, 2016

Former Executive of Defense Contractor Sentenced to 63 Months in Prison for $30 Million Fraud Scheme

A former executive of a Singapore-based defense contracting firm was sentenced to 63 months in prison today for his participation in a fraud scheme that over-billed the U.S. Navy by more than $34 million for ship husbanding services.
(snip)

Alex Wisidagama, 42, of Singapore, the former global manager for government contracts of Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Janis L. Sammartino of the Southern District of California. In addition to imposing the prison term, Judge Sammartino ordered Wisidagama to pay $34.8 million in restitution to the Navy. In March 2014, Wisidagama pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to submit false claims for payment. He is the third defendant to be sentenced in a massive fraud and corruption scheme involving GDMA, which provided port services to U.S. Navy ships in the Asia-Pacific region.

According to admissions made as part of his plea agreement, Wisidagama and his cousin, GDMA CEO Leonard Glenn Francis, 51, of Malaysia, perpetrated a scheme to defraud the U.S. Navy on ship husbanding contracts by, among other things, over-billing for the sale of goods, fuel and port tariffs. Records show that GDMA’s contracts with the U.S. Navy allowed it to sell certain categories of supplies for which GDMA was the lowest bidder. To make it appear that GDMA’s prices were competitive, Wisidagama and others created false price quotations purporting to be from third-party vendors and submitted them to the U.S. Navy, he admitted. Because the contracts forbade GDMA from making up the price of fuel that it supplied to U.S. Navy ships, Wisidagama admitted that he and his conspirators created false invoices purporting to show that GDMA paid more to purchase fuel than was actually the case, which allowed GDMA to build undisclosed markups into the prices at which it supplied fuel to the U.S. Navy. According to the plea, GDMA inflated the cost of port tariff expenses that it passed on to GDMA, despite the fact that the contracts did not allow GDMA to mark up these items.

Wisidagama admitted that in October 2011, GDMA charged the U.S. Navy $2,739,351.49 to service the USS Mustin during a port visit to Thailand, $1,593,766.75 of the charges were fraudulent. Wisidagama admitted that the scheme caused more $34 million in total losses to the U.S. Navy.
(snip)

Those with information relating to fraud, corruption or waste in government contracting should contact the NCIS anonymous tip line at www.ncis.navy.mil or the DoD Hotline at www.dodig.mil/hotline or call [phone].

[babylonsister]

1. I would love to see execs from Halliburton and Brown and Root, amongst

many others, also taken down for this. We know it happened.

[bemildred]

2. Peanuts. nt