Defense procurement

A group of sham companies sold the US Navy $2.7 million worth of nothing

...Michael Kitrel, 42, was charged this week with conspiracy to commit larceny of government money. His alleged crimes were part of a larger $2.7 million scheme involving two Navy lieutenants and a senior chief petty officer who are already serving punishments for their roles in the brazen operation.

“The potential damage from procurement fraud extends well beyond financial losses,” explains a 2018 report from the Department of Defense (pdf). “This crime poses a serious threat to the DoD’s ability to achieve its objectives and can undermine the safety and operational readiness of the warfighter.”

Between 2013 and 2017, the department gave more than 15 million contracts (pdf) to companies that had been indicted, fined, or convicted of fraud, valued at more than $334 billion, according to the DoD’s own data. It was only a slight improvement over the period between 2001 and 2010, when the department awarded more than $1.1 trillion worth of contracts (pdf) to companies that had been found guilty of fraud against the government. Some recent frauds, as first reported by Quartz, have included vendors selling the Navy Chinese-made ballistic vests and helmets that were labeled as having been manufactured in America, and shipping hundreds of counterfeit radio antennas to the Navy SEALs.