What is procurement fraud?
In many ways, the Government operates like any other business. Every day, the Government must buy or “procure” billions of dollars worth of goods and services to keep its operations running. Governments procure everything from paperclips and office supplies, to roads, bridges and even fighter planes.
Unfortunately, dishonest contractors find it far too easy to cheat the government in the procurement process. This is called “procurement fraud.”
Common procurement fraud schemes include the following:
- Billing for goods and services that were never delivered or rendered
- Double billing – charging more than once for the same goods or service
- Billing for marketing, lobbying or other non-contract related corporate activities
- Submitting false service records or samples
- Presenting broken or untested equipment as operational and tested
- Shifting expenses from one fixed-price contract to another
- Billing for premium equipment but actually providing inferior equipment
- Defective testing – certifying that something has passed a test, when in fact it has not
- Falsifying natural resource production records — pumping, mining or harvesting more natural resources from public lands than is actually reported to the government
- Being over-paid by the government for sale of a good or service, and then not reporting that overpayment
- False certification that a contract falls within certain guidelines (i.e. the contractor is a minority or veteran)
- Billing in order to increase revenue instead of billing to reflect actual work performed
- Failing to report known product defects in order to be able to continue to sell or bill the government for the product
- Billing for research that was never conducted and/or falsifying research data that was paid for by the U.S. government
- Winning a contract through kickbacks or bribes
Please Note:Rabin Kammerer Johnson provides these FAQ’s for informational purposes only, and you should not interpret this information as legal advice. If you know about government fraud and want advice as to how the law might apply to the specific facts and circumstances of your case, please click here to contact one of our attorneys.
