Booz Allen closed out 2024 by agreeing to pay $15,875,000 to settle allegations that one of its subsidiaries, Booz Allen Hamilton Engineering Services LLC (BES), violated the False Claims Act by engaging misconduct in connection with the government’s procurement process.

The FCA allegations centered around BES claims for payment related to a “General Service Administration (GSA) task order to supply computer military training simulators and systems to Department of Defense (DoD) agencies, including the Air Force.”  The government claimed two BES employees (John Hancock and Karen Paulsen) “engaged in a fraudulent course of conduct” with an Air Force contracting official (Keith Seguin) and with a manager of BES subcontractor QuantaDyn Corp. (David Bolduc Jr.), resulting in GSA awarding BES a task order and BES awarding task order modules to subcontractor QuantaDyn on sole-source basis.

In particular, as to BES employees Hancock and Paulsen influencing GSA to award the task order to BES, the government contended that Air Force contracting official Seguin “improperly and illegally divulged confidential government contracting and budget information, a competitor’s confidential bid or proposal information, and source selection information to Hancock and Paulsen,” who then “used the illicit information to prepare the GSA offer evaluation forms” for BES and for BES’s only competitor.

The government further contended that after GSA awarded the task order to BES, BES employees Hancock and Paulsen, Air Force contracting official Seguin, and QuantaDyn manager Bolduc used “confidential government budget information to formulate and submit price quotes to GSA for the individual modules that BES sole-sourced to QuantaDyn,” resulting in 37 task order modules BES awarded to QuantaDyn on a sole-source basis.

In addition to this civil settlement, the DOJ also noted that “Hancock, Paulsen, Seguin and Bolduc previously resolved criminal charges related to this conduct.”

This is the latest in a long line of False Claims Act cases and settlements relating to the government procurement process.  Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division remarked: “Government contractors that improperly receive confidential government information during the procurement process corrupt the integrity of that process. This settlement demonstrates our continuing commitment to protecting the integrity of the government’s procurement process.”  Indeed, the DOJ established the Procurement Collusion Strike Force to root out antitrust violations and related schemes in the government procurement process.

This is not Booz Allen’s only recent FCA settlement.  In 2023, Booz Allen agreed to pay the United States $377 million to settle charges that it billed the government for costs unrelated to its government contracts.

If you have any information about government contract or procurement fraud, or would like to learn what it means to be a whistleblower, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We will connect you with an experienced member of our whistleblower team.

Read Booz Allen Pays $15.875M to Settle False Claims Act, Procurement Allegations at constantinecannon.com