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Pentagon Charged $1Million for Nuts & Bolts

While this is utterly ridiculous, I'm curious how this amounts to fraud. Aren't they entitled to charge whatever they choose, and if the Pentagon decides to pay it, it's their own fault.
 
whooleytoo said:
While this is utterly ridiculous, I'm curious how this amounts to fraud. Aren't they entitled to charge whatever they choose, and if the Pentagon decides to pay it, it's their own fault.
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Government contracts have abuse prevention provisions to prevent things like this from being gotten away with. The goal is to keep the supply chain from being held up by red tape, so oversight takes place more after the fact than before. Since there is such an opportunity for abuse and, as these women have shown, people willing to abuse, contracts are written with protection.

The mistake that these women made was that it is a lot better to rip off a private company than it is the government. Both will incur civil fines and criminal penalties, but the government will come down on you like a ton of bricks. When I was working for the government, we had an employee that stole a couple hundred K. By the time the various parts of the government are done with him, he could be down a few million (plus jail time).
 
Outrageous, simply outrageous. I hope she rots in jail. :mad:

Unless of course, those nuts & bolts were of such high quality to merit such a price. ;)
 
It doesn't sound like they're going to get a lot of the money back... they're probably getting cents on the dollar for auctioning all that junk off, and then there's anything that is non-tangible that was purchased....le sigh. And she gets a 20 year hotel stay with the government.
 
nbs2 said:
Government contracts have abuse prevention provisions to prevent things like this from being gotten away with. The goal is to keep the supply chain from being held up by red tape, so oversight takes place more after the fact than before. Since there is such an opportunity for abuse and, as these women have shown, people willing to abuse, contracts are written with protection.

The mistake that these women made was that it is a lot better to rip off a private company than it is the government. Both will incur civil fines and criminal penalties, but the government will come down on you like a ton of bricks. When I was working for the government, we had an employee that stole a couple hundred K. By the time the various parts of the government are done with him, he could be down a few million (plus jail time).
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Very well said. Plus, no matter what anyone says, they are the government, and they can find you, even if it means not going by constitutional means..

IMO, they were too greedy in this case.. Perhaps take 10 million, convert to cash, and run to switzerland to live with a million cows.. :p
 
dmw007 said:
Outrageous, simply outrageous. I hope she rots in jail. :mad:

Unless of course, those nuts & bolts were of such high quality to merit such a price. ;)
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It was the shipping that they went to town on.us $997k to ship a pair of 30-odd cent washers. I guess it would be legit if they were hand-delivered in the Holy Grail with platinum packing peanuts.
 
While it's certainly criminal and certainly punishable...20 years in prison?

I dunno, I mean, people have gotten that much time for murder.

I'd say just make them pay as much back as possible, and sentence them based on whatever is left...
 
I can see the conversation now:

Accountant: "Oh my gosh Mr President we have been billed $1 million for nuts and bolts! How are we gonna pay for it? Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! It wasn't my fault sir I didn't even realise....

President: "Get a hold of yourself. Just keep it together"

:p
 
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