An American Lion

This American Lion is watching out for YOU!

I realize that crooks are just crooks, and they’re going to lie, cheat and steal no matter what. It shouldn’t matter if they’re ripping off the government, if they’re ripping off the little sisters of the poor, or if they’re pretending to be disabled Veterans in order to get lucrative contracts specifically targeted to go to Service Disabled Veterans. I think the worst crook of all is someone who steals from their own family.

Wait—no, that’s no the worst. I have to remember that yes, I did, indeed, steal from my Father in the 1970s, before we booted him as the CEO of Rogers Defence Industries. That’s a bad example. The worst people of all are the ones who tell their kid to go hide in an attic so they can launch a badly-designed hot air balloon and create a national panic over nothing in order to get famous. If you know of such an event like that happening, let me know, and I’ll cite that here.

Anyway, there’s a program set up to award government contracts to Service Disabled Veterans. This is the kind of government spending I can live with. The Government Accountability Office tore into this program and found all kinds of problems.

This one made me laugh. A construction/maintenance/repair contract in New Jersey was deemed fraudulent, and it was an $8.1 mllion dollar contract. The reasons:

Firm is ineligible because the service-disabled veteran owner is a full-time New Jersey state employee and does not manage the firm’s day-to-day operations. Our investigation also found that the firm’s 49 percent owner, who is not a service-disabled veteran, owns five additional non-SDVOSB construction firms at the same address as the SDVOSB firm receiving contracts. SBA bid protest initially determined that the SDVOSB firm was ineligible because the service-disabled veteran did not own at least 51 percent of the firm. SBA later reversed its decision when the firm submitted revised paperwork.

That’s a New Jersey state employee with some serious ethics problems. I don’t know why it made me think of the Sopranos, though. I haven’t thought about that show in years.

At the end of the report, we come to find out that [pdf alert]:

At the time the act took effect, VA already maintained an online database, VetBiz Vendor Information Pages, referred to as VA’s VetBiz database, in which nearly 16,500 firms had self-certified as SDVOSBs or VOSBs.While not yet fully implemented, VA’s planned validation program includes steps to verify a firm’s eligibility for the program, including validating the service-disabled status claimed by an owner and his/her control of day-to-day operations. The VA program also includes plans for document reviews and site visits to firms seeking VA certification as SDVOSBs or VOSBs. Requiring submission of documents to demonstrate ownership and control of an SDVOSB has some value as a deterrent—ownership documents could have prevented instances demonstrated in our case studies where the service-disabled veteran was receiving less than 51 percent of the profits. The most effective preventive controls involve the verification of information, such as verifying service-disabled status with VA’s database and service-disabled veteran participation in the business through an unannounced site visit. Verification of service-disabled veteran status through VA’s database could have prevented the most egregious example of fraud where the owner was not even a service-disabled veteran.Although VA’s proposed system was not intended for governmentwide use, once the certification system is in place, all SDVOSBs wishing to do business with VA will eventually have to be certified.

My question is—why were these firms allowed to “self-certify?” Is that standard business practice for allowing companies to become Federal contractors across the board? Is that list of 16,500 firms now useless because it was set up before controls were put in place? Does the list have to be purged and disregarded now that more effective fraud prevention controls are being put in place or will it have to be validated in some way?

As to a larger point, if “self-certification” is allowed, does this not mean that we potentially have a significant number of contractors that may be fraudulent, or that may need to be independently verified as being legitimate, across the board?

Thank goodness for the GAO. I’d hate to have to track down these crooks on my own.