Within a few short months, he discovered that Harper was using sham small businesses as well. After leaving his job at Pompano Masonry and filing the lawsuit, Howard went to work at Harper Construction. This resulted in some rather unusual arrangements, such as Caddell and Yates routing a $1.4 million subcontract for food service equipment through a small landscaping company called Power Mulch-for a 1 percent fee.ĭon’t write Howard off as just a disgruntled employee. The lawsuit alleges a dozen different instances where Caddell and Yates chose large, trusted contractors to perform the work, and then paid small businesses one to two percent of the subcontract value to act as middlemen so Caddell and Yates could meet their small business subcontracting goal of 77 percent. For this service, the lawsuit claims, they offered and paid Pompano an additional 2 percent of the subcontract’s almost $15 million value-over $250,000.Īside from the creation of a fake small business that existed only on paper, Caddell and Yates appear to have regularly used “pass-through” small businesses on that project. Doing so would allow Caddell and Yates to count the work done by Pompano (a large business) as if it were being done by a small business, helping them fulfill their small business subcontracting plan. The lawsuit, filed by former Pompano Masonry employee Rickey Howard, alleges that Caddell and Yates, while engaged in a $190 million construction project for the Navy at Camp Lejeune, encouraged Pompano to create a sham small business that they would then use to route Pompano’s payments through. She pleaded guilty in 2015 to lying to investigators and received a 30-month prison sentence. The government partially intervened in the case, securing a guilty plea from the owner of the subcontractor involved-Pompano Masonry. Both Caddell and Yates are currently the subjects of an unreported years-long whistleblower lawsuit alleging that they, through a joint venture, fraudulently misrepresented their use of small business subcontracts for a 2009 Camp Lejeune project. Yates each designed two-one made of concrete and the second of other materials-giving them half of the prototypes that Border Patrol assessed. While Customs and Border Protection (Border Patrol) invited four companies to design one border wall prototype, Caddell Construction and W.G. And if funding for a new wall is found, these companies might be back in the game. Yates & Sons, and Fisher Sand & Gravel-should concern contracting officers and prompt stronger oversight in future contracts to ensure that these companies play by the rules.Īlthough the Trump Administration has yet to obtain funding to build a wall with a new design along much of the southern border, these companies are likely to participate in other state or federal contracts.
The past conduct of three contractors-Caddell Construction, W.G. Owned by FOX Corporation, FNC is available in nearly 90 million homes and dominates the cable news landscape, routinely notching the top ten programs in the genre.Half of the six contractors that built border wall prototypes had questionable track records, including one contractor that the Army Corps of Engineers felt was too risky to do future business with, according to a review of public records, a previously unreported whistleblower lawsuit, and new documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the Project On Government Oversight. A 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey also found that among Americans who could name an objective news source, FOX News was the top-cited outlet. A 2019 Suffolk University poll named FOX News as the most trusted source for television news or commentary, while a 2019 Brand Keys Emotion Engagement Analysis survey found that FOX News was the most trusted cable news brand. According to a 2020 Brand Keys Consumer Loyalty Engagement Index report, FOX News is the top brand in the country for morning and evening news coverage. The number one network in cable, FNC has been the most-watched television news channel for 18 consecutive years. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service delivering breaking news as well as political and business news.
0 kommentar(er)
