SAIC Subcontractors Indicted in $40+ million Alleged Fraud; SAIC Consultant Pleads Guilty in Scheme

MR - Nine defendants have been indicted in connection with an elaborate scheme to defraud the City of New York on its CityTime project. The people named in the indictment are Mark Mazer, Gerard Denault, Padma Allen, Reddy Allen, Dimitriy Aronshtein, Svetlana Mazer, Larisa Medzon, and Anna Makovetskaya. The SAIC subcontractors allegedly complicit in the scheme, along with 2 SAIC employees and a New York Office of Payroll Administration staffer, are Technodyne LLC, D.A. Solutions, Inc. and Prime View, Inc. The contractors are alleged to have grossly over-billed for consultant time on the engagement, and to have employed a network of shell companies and bank accounts in the US and elsewhere to conceal more than $40 million in fraudulently-billed consulting fees. Mark Mazer was a city employee authorized to approve consultant invoices. SAIC employee, Carl Bell, a Chief Systems Engineer in the firm's New York Office, pled guilty to multiple charges in the fraud, and has admitted to receiving millions in kickbacks. Another SAIC employee, Gerard Denault, was charged and is out on bail. Ironically, CityTime, a project that endeavors to properly report time worked, has itself ballooned to 950% of its original budget due, in part, to fraudulently reported time. "IT contracts that involve hundreds of millions of dollars and multiple layers of consultants are a new frontier for fraud, and DOI has been at the forefront of exposing it," said Rose Gill Hearn, Commissioner, New Your City Department of Investigation. (updated 1-July-2011, Research Note includes allegation details, indictment and complaint - 2,975 words) . . . (to read the remainder of this article, please log in below.)