Former PWC IT chief, Maneesh Gupta, plead guilty to 49 felony charges related to a bid rigging scheme. Gupta is the former head of Prince William County’s Office of Information Technology. According to insidenova.com:
Maneesh Gupta, 47, the former OIT systems division chief, pleaded guilty to charges of public fraud, combination to rig bids, conspiracy to commit forgery, uttering and obtaining money by false pretenses.
The public fraud charge was amended from a charge of racketeering. Prosecutors dropped a charge of money laundering.
Prosecutors offered Gupta a plea agreement, but Prince William Circuit Court Judge Richard B. Potter said he would defer his decision on whether or not to accept it until Gupta’s sentencing hearing on Oct. 6.
Potter said he wanted to see a detailed restitution plan before he would accept the agreement.
Prosecutors said they are asking Gupta to repay $3.7 million the county lost in the scheme.
Prosecutors are also recommending that Gupta be sentenced to serve three years in prison, with another 48 years suspended, and 10 years of probation, Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert said.
Prosecutors said that Gupta, along with several other former county employees, set up a company, Praetorian, and, using his position with the county government, awarded 26 county contracts for IT work to that company. Prosecutors said Praetorian earned more than $8 million during the scheme, which ran from 2004 to April 2009.
Two other former employees, John Roessler and his brother Vernon, were charged the same as Gupta. Another employee, Richard Billingsley, was charged with only 3 felonies.
Hopefully these men will be forced to make restitution and the county can recover some of its money–our money. That’s a lot of clam shells to be missing, especially during a recession. Hopefully, the county will do a better job with ‘trust but verify’ in the future. 3 years seems like a very short time for $3.7 million dollars stolen. A bank robber would get more time.
I’m always surprised that these people think that they will get away with stuff like this. Either there are a whole lot more of these crooks successfully committing crimes and therefor making others think that they, too, will succeed….OR….they are idiots.
Cargo – this stuff is easier to get away with than you might think when those in charge are asleep at the wheel. Harry Markopolos was screaming and waving his arms for years before the Securities and Exchange Commission or anyone else ever looked into what Madoff was doing.
And in this case, questionable practices by the IT Department as well as sign-offs on the contracts by the County Executive Office were brought to the attention of the BOCS long before audit team was hired.
It sure went on for a long time.
It burns me up that these toads would be out of jail in 4 years. Of course, I would like to think that they had to get out of jail to go to work to repay the county since much of the money they stole is probably out of country now.
Correction: THIEVES. Toads is too weak of a word.
Are they really theives or did they wrongfully pull stings to get work to earn money? In order for contracts to continously be awarded to several shell companies without raising an eyebrow, there would need to be work that needs to be done and they would have had to complete the work successfully, I would think… What i think is the government are leaving out alot of the smaller details and portraying this as something way more then it really is to cover their own backs.
@Donna
It was criminal bid rigging.