Contractor charged with obtaining $2M from stimulus funds by fraud
On the heels of a report that the Department of Veterans Affairs wasted $2.2 billion in taxpayer money last year, a Navy veteran appeared Wednesday in federal court in San Antonio on charges that he lied about his firm's qualifications to the VA to get $2 million in contracts for work at one of its hospitals.
Jonathan Patrick Saunders was indicted by a federal grand jury on March 6 with six counts of wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft.
Saunders, of Colorado, is president and co-owner of Saunders MEP Inc., which has been awarded a few government contracts around the country, including one for building construction projects at the VA Hospital in Kerrville, which is at the center of the indictment.
The indictment alleges that when he applied in March 2008 for the Kerrville contract, he claimed that his firm qualified as a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, that certain people with engineering or architectural qualifications worked for the company and that the firm had done work on a previous project. In reality, the indictment said, none of that was true, and he faces the aggravated ID charges because he used certain people's names without permission.
More at http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Contractor-charged-with-obtaining-2M-from-4371290.php .
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