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PW employees charged with stealing millions
Four men have been charged with setting up shell companies to steal millions through the county's Office of Information Technology.On June 2, county and law enforcement officials announced the result of an investigation into a scheme involving falsified bids and fake contractors.
According to County Executive Craig Gerhart, staffers in the county's Office of Information Technology and their accomplices had set up shell companies to submit false bids for contract work through the county.
Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened and how much money was stolen but it seems as though the group set up several fake companies that bid on county projects. Using the fake companies, they inflated the bids while ensuring that one of their companies would usually be awarded the contract. In some cases, they did some of the work that they were contracted for but in other cases, they simply kept the money and did no work.
More than $8 million was funneled through the group and county officials estimate that some work was done for about half of the projects, although it was not necessarily what was expected. Police Chief Charlie Deane said investigators don't know yet how much money was stolen but that they are working to get it back.
“A significant amount of money was moved out of the country and was probably removed to India,” he said.
Some of the illegal dealings involved a $500,000 federal grant for the county's police department so the FBI has been involved in the investigation as well.
According to Gerhart, the scheme appears to have been going on for about five years and was only uncovered in February after a county employee alerted supervisors to “improprieties” in the office. The matter was referred to Gerhart, who ordered an audit of the Office of Information Technology.
As a result, several employees were placed on administrative leave and three: John Lim, Davis Ampofo and Maneesh Gupta, were later fired.
Gupta has been charged with racketeering, money laundering and multiple counts of bid rigging, conspiracy to commit forgery, uttering and obtaining money by false pretenses.
As of press time, Lim and Ampofo had not been charged.
Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert said the investigation is ongoing and other suspects may be charged later but he would not comment on whether Lim and Ampofo are suspected of criminal wrongdoing.
Two former county employees were also charged. John Patrick Roessler and Richard Todd Billingsley both face charges similar to Gupta's. Gerhart said the two had been working for the county but were no longer employees by the time the investigation began.
John Roessler's brother, Vernon Andrew Roessler, faces similar charges as well. Vernon Roessler was not a county employee.
The head of the department, Masood Noorbakhsh, has been placed on administrative leave and Gerhart said he and the county are negotiating his “separation” from county employment. Insiders said it appears as though Noorbakhsh was not aware of what was going on in his department.
Gerhart said the department has controls in place to keep companies from cheating but with employees working the scheme from the inside, they were able to ignore the controls and get away with the plan for several years.
Deane said the scheme was a “fairly classic” case and Ebert said that a tip-off is generally the only way to detect such a plan.
“It would be very hard to detect this without somebody blowing the whistle,” he said.
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