ATLANTIC BEACH, Fla. — One of the nation’s largest providers of privatized military housing to the U.S. Armed Forces pled guilty last week to defrauding multiple branches of the U.S. military.
Balfour Beatty Communities LLC (BBC) admitted to obtaining performance bonuses by submitting false information to the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy.
Locally, BBC provides living environments at Naval Station Mayport.
BBC entered the plea, pursuant to plea agreement with the United States, before U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the District of Columbia on Wednesday.
“Instead of promptly repairing housing for U.S. servicemembers as required, BBC lied about the repairs to pocket millions of dollars in performance bonuses,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, BBC agreed to pay more than $33.6 million in criminal fines and over $31.8 million in restitution to the U.S. military, serve three years of probation, and engage an independent compliance monitor for a period of three years.
Separately, BBC entered into a False Claims Act (FCA) settlement under which it is obligated to pay approximately $35.2 million in civil restitution and penalties to the United States, which the Justice Department credited against BBC’s criminal restitution and fine.
According to court documents, from around 2013 to around 2019, BBC employees falsified information so that BBC’s incentive fee requests falsely reflected that BBC had met performance objectives. However, in reality, BBC did not legitimately meet those objectives and rather, BBC employees altered or manipulated data to falsely inflate these metrics.
Ultimately, the manipulation of those metrics fraudulently induced the service branches to pay performance incentive fees which BBC had not earned.
As a result, according to court documents, there were lengthy and unnecessary delays in the resolution of maintenance issues to residents.
As part of BBC’s plea agreement, BBC agreed to cooperate fully with the United States in all matters relating to the conduct covered by the plea agreement and other conduct under investigation by the United States, to self-report violations of U.S. federal criminal law, and to continue to implement a compliance and ethics program designed to effectively detect and deter violations of U.S. anti-fraud laws throughout its operations.