O'Keefe Media Group's latest coup is the exposure of how some minority owned businesses are gaming the federal contracting system that gives preferences to minority owned businesses. In "BREAKING: $100 Billion Federal Contracting Scam. 8(a) Firm Admits to Violating Federal Law, Using Minority-Owned Status as a Front to Obtain $100M+ No-Bid Government Contracts While Outsourcing 80% of the Work," it discusses how federal contractor ATI Government Solutions, a Native American owned company, "exploits minority-preference programs to secure more than $100 million in no-bid government contracts while subcontracting out the vast majority of the work" to businesses that would otherwise never qualify for the contracts because they are not Native American owned.
Under the 8(a) system, meant to empower disadvantaged businesses, “pass-through” contractors such as ATI serve as paper fronts, taking much of the money off the top while doing little or none of the work. Cromwell admitted the company performs only 20% of its multi-million-dollar no-bid federal contracts, subcontracting out the remaining 80% – a textbook case of a “pass-through” scheme.
"In short, ATI secures the contracts, gets the money, acts as a passthrough and it’s the tax payer who gets screwed over," the article states. But the fraud only gets worse as the tribal entity that supposedly runs ATI is only a 51% owner of the company, but the remainder of the ownership is to two Caucasians who really run the operation.
End it now.
ReplyDeleteExactly. There shouldn't be preferences.
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