Massive fraud such as this:
DOJ continues its investigation into fraud in a program intended to help
schools and libraries connect to the Internet
By Grant Gross, IDG News Service
May 18, 2007
The Kansas City, Missouri School District will pay the U.S. government
$66,000 and relinquish claims to $13.6 million in federal funds as part
of a court settlement for fraud charges involving a program intended to
help schools and libraries in poor areas connect to the Internet.
The school district was charged with making false claims and statements
in connection with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's E-Rate
program, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a late Thursday release
announcing the settlement.
Between 2002 and 2006, the school district pursued claims for payments
for a contract that had been cancelled, did not comply with the
mandatory competitive bidding process and improperly extended contracts
to avoid rebidding, the DOJ said.
The E-Rate program, created by the U.S. Congress in the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, is funded by taxes collected from
telephone users.
The school district, as part of the agreement with the DOJ, agreed that
three of its employees and the district's consultant, Dietrich Lockard
Group, would no longer play a role in the program's application process
for the schools. The DOJ learned of the allegations when another
company, American Fiber Systems, filed a whistleblower complaint in May
2006.
"False claims to this very important federal program will not be
tolerated," Peter Keisler, assistant attorney general for the DOJ's
Civil Division, said in a statement.
The DOJ has an ongoing investigation into fraud and anticompetitive
conduct in the E-Rate program in Kansas City and elsewhere.
In February, a U.S. federal jury convicted the former owner and
president of ATE Tel Solutions, a telecommunications and Internet
service provider, on seven of nine counts of wire fraud in a scheme to
defraud the E-Rate program. Rafael G. Adame was convicted of submitting
fraudulent invoices.
In June 2006, the FCC temporarily barred two companies, NEC-Business
Network Solutions and Inter-Tel Technologies, from receiving E-Rate funds.
--
David Solomonoff, President
Internet Society of New York
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
isoc-ny.org
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