Unmitigated OCI Leads to FCA Settlement
Government contractors settle False Claims Act (FCA) lawsuits nearly every single day. Government contractors settle FCA suits routinely; but it is exceedingly rare for a Government entity to settle an FCA suit via payment of a multi-million dollar amount. It is rare for such an entity to be sued in the first place, let alone to settle such a suit.
Think about it for a second. In order to be accused of violating the False Claims Act, an entity must have (allegedly) knowingly submitted false or fictitious claims for money to a Federal agency. In order for a Government entity to be accused of violating the FCA, it must have (allegedly) knowingly submitted false or fictitious claims to another Government entity. How does that work?
But before we get into the whys and wherefores, let’s discuss organizational conflicts of interest (OCIs).
We have discussed OCIs before, notably in this article. We discussed the three “flavors” of OCI – “biased ground rules,” “impaired objectivity,” and “unequal access to information.” When OCIs are alleged to have occurred, the allegations must be investigated by the awarding Contracting Officer. OCIs can be waived by the Contracting Officer, or else they can be mitigated by the bidder (with the efficacy of that mitigation being reviewed by the Contracting Officer). But the allegations must be investigated and the resulting actions, and rationale, must be documented. The facts and circumstances are subject to legal review for the reasonableness of the resulting actions.
Hang on to that thought. We’ll get back to OCIs in a minute.
Now we are on the same page, and we are ready to discuss United States, Virginia and the District of Columbia, ex rel. Shahiq Khwaja v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, et al., Case No. 1:12-cv-00268-RJL (D.D.C.).
In this case, a Government entity was sued under the FCA by a qui tam relator, a former employee of that very same entity, who alleged that the entity misused Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grant funds by inappropriately awarding work under other than “full and open competition” procedures, in violation of certifications to the FTA that the entity would comply with statutes and regulations covering awards of work when using the FTA funds.
Would you like to know more?
The entity in question is the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA or “Metro”), which is (according to Wikipedia) a Government agency created by an interstate compact between the State of Maryland, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the District of Columbia. The compact, which was approved by Congress, provides that WMATA is legally incorporated in the District of Columbia. In addition (according to Wikipedia), the compact grants WMATA “sovereign immunity by all three jurisdictions in which it operates, and except for certain limited exceptions, the authority cannot be successfully sued unless it waives immunity.”
Well, one of those “limited exceptions” must be in the case of alleged fraud, because WMATA’s former employee, Shahiq Khwaja, filed suit under the FCA. Apparently, his suit was complex, because the WMATA settlement only addresses the Federal allegations related to alleged misuse of FTA grant funds. Khwaja’s suit also included allegations on behalf of Virginia and the District of Columbia, which were not resolved. In addition, Khwaja also sued WMATA for “violating the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA) provisions protecting whistleblowers [by alleging] that WMATA terminated him from his position as an information technology functional manager because he expressed concerns about the manner in which WMATA was financially and technically administering the integration project which was funded, in part, with ARRA funds.”
Regardless of the complexity and multiple issues involved, the allegations can be expressed in a couple of paragraphs. As usual, we quote from the DOJ press release announcing the settlement.
In or around August 2009, WMATA awarded Metaformers, using full and open competition procedures, a relatively modest contract valued at approximately $256,000 to assess WMATA’s financial system. Less than one year later, in July 2010, WMATA awarded Metaformers the $14 million contract to integrate the Authority’s financial and business systems. WMATA awarded the contract non-competitively and allegedly without legitimate justification for doing so, foreclosing an opportunity for other contractors and companies to submit proposals for the lucrative project. WMATA’s conduct was allegedly in violation of its certification – and commitment - to administer the FTA grant funds using full and open competition.
In awarding the $14 million integration contract, WMATA also allegedly violated ‘conflict of interest rules’ governing use of FTA grant funds. WMATA’s noncompetitive award to Metaformers was based, in part, on the work completed by Metaformers under the assessment contract. By competitively awarding the smaller assessment contract and then non-competitively awarding the far more lucrative integration project both to the same contractor, WMATA violated federal procurement conflict of interest rules by giving one contractor an advantage over others who might have been interested in competing for the integration project.
Because of WMATA’s conduct, contractors who might have been interested in submitting proposals or bids for the integration project never had the opportunity to do so. Thus, WMATA’s conduct was allegedly in violation of its certification and commitment to administer the FTA grant funds avoiding conflicts of interest in procurements.
WMATA agreed to pay $4,240,341 to resolve the allegations with respect to the FTA funds it allegedly misused. According to the press release, Mr. Khwaja will receive approximately $996,480 as his share of the recovery. In addition, “WMATA negotiated with Mr. Khwaja’s counsel to resolve Mr. Khwaja’s wrongful termination claim for $390,000.”
Yep. Same old story.
Happens nearly every single day.
When will we learn?
The Strange Antinomy of Bell Helicopter's Spare Part Pricing
This is kind of a puzzler. We seem to have two contradictory conclusions, each of which may be a reasonable interpretation of the same set of facts and circumstances. An antinomy, if you will.
Let’s start with the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, whose July 7, 2014, report, entitled “Defense Logistics Agency Aviation Potentially Overpaid Bell Helicopter for Sole-Source Commercial Spare Parts,” reported that the DOD IG had found:
The contracting officer did not sufficiently determine whether prices were fair and reasonable for sole-source commercial parts negotiated on contract SPE4AX-12-D-9005. This occurred because the contracting officer did not perform an adequate analysis when procuring sole-source commercial parts. … the contracting officer did not obtain cost data to perform cost analysis, and DLA potentially overpaid Bell about $9 million on 33 of 35 sole-source commercial spare parts reviewed. In addition, DLA may overpay as much as $2.6 million over the next 12 months on future orders under this contract.
On its face, that’s a pretty weird finding, right?
What does the phrase “sole-source commercial parts” even mean? Why would commercial parts ever be procured on a sole source basis? Let’s think about it.
A commercial item – any item – is commercial because it is of a type that is customarily used by the general public, and it has actually been sold (or offered for sale) to the general public. (See the definition of “commercial item” at FAR 2.101.) A sole source acquisition is a contract that is solicited from one and only one source. (See FAR 2.101 again.) FAR Part 6 states that the policy of the U.S. Government is to procure goods and services using “full and open competition” unless a statutory exemption from that policy exists. There is one exemption that might apply to the situation where the DLA wants to acquire spare parts for military helicopters: “only one responsible source and no other suppliers or services will satisfy agency requirements.” Putting all this together, we’re guessing that the contracting officer needed to buy spare parts for helicopters manufactured by Bell Helicopters, and Bell Helicopters was the only known source for those spare parts.
But if Bell Helicopter was the only known source for spare parts for its own helicopters, then how did the company justify the commerciality of its parts? How did the contracting officer justify the finding that the spare parts met the FAR definition of commercial items?
We don’t know the answer to those questions, primarily because the DOD IG classified its audit report as “For Official Use Only” and didn’t provide the full report to the public for review. (Nice transparency, that.) But we can speculate that Bell Helicopter must provide the same (or very similar) parts to “the general public”—or at least to non-governmental entities such as state or local law enforcement agencies. If that was the case, then Bell could have argued that the market had established the prices for those spare parts, and if those prices were good enough for Joe Public (or at least for LEO Public) then they should be good enough for the DLA.
We also know (because it was in the publicly released summary) that the DOD IG was concerned that “the contracting officer used the previous DoD purchase price without performing historical price analysis and accepted Bell’s market-based pricing strategy in a noncompetitive environment without performing a sufficient sales analysis.” That tells us at least two things. First, it tells us that DOD had purchased the parts before, and (presumably) had established that the prices it had paid at that time were fair and reasonable. Reading between the lines, we can speculate that the contracting officer used those prior prices as the basis for finding Bell’s current prices were fair and reasonable … but that the CO didn’t actually compare the prices (after adjusting for inflation, quantity, and other terms and conditions).
The second thing we can infer from the little bit of IG audit report that was released is that the CO did not actually review the prices paid by the non-governmental entities for the parts, and did not compare the prices s/he was going to pay to those historical prices (after adjusting for inflation, quantity, and other terms and conditions).
Or maybe the CO did all that stuff but didn’t document the analyses performed in the file. We don’t know.
But the DOD IG report went further than that. The IG report found that: “the contracting officer did not obtain cost data to perform cost analysis.” That finding would make sense if the items didn’t qualify as commercial items. If that were the case, then the CO would have had to perform a rigorous cost analysis (since there was no competition to permit price analysis alone to support the finding that the prices were fair and reasonable). So we can infer that the IG was asserting the items did not qualify as commercial items and thus required cost analysis, which was not performed because cost information was not requested from Bell Helicopter. We can infer that the CO didn’t request cost information because s/he didn’t think a cost analysis had to be performed. We can infer the CO concluded that cost analysis did not need to be performed because either (a) the parts qualified as commercial items, or (b) the CO had historical prices that were reasonably close to current prices.
We can make a lot of inferences, suppositions, speculations, and guesses about the situation. But we don’t know for sure because the DOD IG didn’t release the audit report to the public. In order to obtain a copy, one needed to submit a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, pay the fees, and hope the IG decided to release the report.1 Who was going to do that?
Bloomberg did.
Bloomberg reported the following additional facts—
The alleged overcharges were incurred on Bell’s 2012 sole-source, $128 million contract to support Navy and Marine Corps H-1 and Army OH-58 Kiowa helicopters. The contract is in place until February 2017. … Auditors for the inspector general calculated the potential overpayments based on cost data that Bell Helicopter provided under an administrative subpoena, according to the report. …
In response to the inspector general’s recommendation that the Defense Logistics Agency pursue options including a voluntary refund from Bell, Matthew Beebe, the agency’s director of acquisition, told auditors that ‘Bell has consistently refused to provide cost data for commercial parts’ it sells the Pentagon. Agency officials do ‘not believe they have the ability to obtain cost data,’ the report said.
Apparently, then, the DLA continues to believe that the spare parts qualified as commercial items under the FAR definition. Accordingly, it is difficult to see why the contracting officer would have been required to perform cost analysis or would have needed to obtain the cost data that the IG need to use a subpoena to obtain.
The official DLA position on the matter was reported by Bloomberg as follows:
Michelle McCaskill, a spokeswoman for the agency, said today in an e-mailed statement that it’s not going to press Bell Helicopter for a refund ‘because DLA procured the items under current commercial contracting procedures and pricing methodology.’
‘The prices on this contract are fair and reasonable in accordance with current federal and defense acquisition regulations as well as commercial item pricing guidance,’ she said.
On one hand, we have an IG audit report that seems to assert the spare parts were not commercial items but, on the other hand, we have both the contractor and acquiring agency firmly maintaining that the spare parts were, indeed, commercial items. It’s an antinomy.
If the prices were fair and reasonable in accordance with the rules governing such matters, then what was the IG’s beef? Was Bell Helicopter not allowed to make the same margin on its parts when selling to the DLA as it made from selling to non-governmental entities? Doesn’t that position violate both the spirit and letter of applicable statutes and regulation?
How can Bell Helicopter be overcharging the DLA when its pricing is fully compliant with applicable laws and regulations? We don’t get it.
We also don’t get the title of the IG audit report. What does “potentially overpaid” mean in this context? The only interpretation we can make is that the IG is saying that, had the CO obtained cost and pricing data, and performed a rigorous cost analysis (including an analysis of profit using DOD’s weighted guidelines approach to structured profit analysis), then the CO would have concluded that Bell Helicopter's proposed prices were not fair and reasonable—and would have negotiated a lower price.
If that’s the IG’s position, we have trouble buying it. That position would ignore the fact that Bell Helicopter was the sole source for the spare parts. Presumably DOD could not obtain the parts from any other source so, to a very great extent, the CO had to pay the price Bell Helicopter was asking. After all, Bell could simply choose not to sell DLA the spare parts. What is a completely unreasonable profit expectation in a competitive situation may turn out to be a very reasonable profit in a non-competitive situation. That’s the power of monopoly supply.
Moreover, what’s the deal with “potentially overpaid” in an audit report? Either the spare parts were fairly priced or they were not. If the parts were priced and negotiated in accordance with applicable statutes and regulations, then in fact DLA did not overpay for them. If the parts were improperly priced (based on a non-legitimate claim of commerciality), then the audit report ought to come right out and say so. Instead, the IG seems to be overreaching by attacking the CO’s judgment, even though the CO followed all the rules (according to the DLA). Such a headline smacks of sensationalism, which ought to have no place in a serious audit report that may affect the career of a civil servant—especially when that sensationalist headline is picked up by other sources and used to bash DOD’s fiscal responsibility yet again.
Thus, for a number of reasons we believe this particular DOD IG audit report fell short of the standards we expect of such an important topic. We think Baron von Steuben would be disappointed.
Interestingly, the DOD Director of Defense Pricing may tend to agree with the IG’s ambivalent position. The released report summary stated—
The Director, Defense Pricing, should issue guidance to establish a percentage of commercial sales that is sufficient to determine fair and reasonable prices when items are being acquired on a sole-source contract and market-based prices are used. The guidance should also require contracting officers to request ‘information other than cost or pricing data,’ to include cost data, if sales data are not sufficient. … Comments from the Director, Defense Pricing, addressed Recommendation 1. No further comments are required.
That seems to indicate that the Director, Defense Pricing, agreed with the IG’s recommendation. (If there was no agreement, it almost certainly would have been noted.) That seems to indicate that the Director, Defense Pricing, would like to issue guidance to establish a percentage of sales that would qualify a part as a commercial item. That seems to indicate that the Director, Defense Pricing, would like to roll back provisions of the 20 year-old Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA). We will have to see what the future holds in that regard.
Meanwhile, Bell Helicopter and other contractors in similar positions will continue to sell the Pentagon parts under the current FAR definition of “commercial items.” They will continue to price those parts at prices set by the marketplace, instead of prices set by their costs as marked-up by a fairly arbitrary profit percentage. They will continue to comply with public laws and federal regulations, while certain parties may insinuate there is something wrong with the process, even though there is no allegation of any actual noncompliance.
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Cyber-Security is Important to Government Contractors
Captain Obvious here, bringing you a Public Service Announcement. Your corporation is very likely under attack from cyber-criminals seeking to steal protected information. If you are a government contractor, it is important that you take strong measures to secure that protected information. A failure to secure protected information may lead to lawsuits, degradation of the brand reputation … or worse.
Of course, this is not news to the long-time readers of this blog. We started writing about cyber-warfare and cyber-security in November, 2009. A couple of months later, we discussed the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative (CNCI). A couple of months after that, we posted an article in which we warned readers that “cyber protection may become a contract compliance issue.” We wrote, “companies will need to comply with the requirements of the new contract clauses, or else risk accusations of breach of contract (or worse).”
A few months later (November, 2010), we added some scare stories about the threats and what happened when cyber-security flaws were exploited. In that same month, another article asserted that, “Your company likely is not enough to secure its computer networks, not nearly enough.” In June, 2011, we devoted an entire article to “cyber-wars.” In that article, we discussed cyber-attacks on Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L-3 Communications. And we aren’t even mentioning the articles we devoted to the travails of SAIC in this area.
Meanwhile, DOD promulgated a final rule that requires “defense contractors to incorporate established information security standards on their unclassified networks and to report cyber-intrusion incidents that result in the loss of unclassified controlled technical information from these networks.”
To sum up, your company has had plenty of time to invest in cyber security and to protect important information. You have seen other companies attacked and you have seen your Government customers create regulatory requirements that provide both carrots (competitive advantage) and sticks (potential breach of contract claims) for those that fail to take the matter seriously enough.
At this point, it’s on you.
Accordingly, nobody should be surprised that both Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have suspended “most contracts” with the government contractor USIS—the self-proclaimed “leader in Federal background investigations.”
What happened?
On August 6, 2014, the company issued the following press release:
Our internal IT security team recently identified an apparent external cyber-attack on USIS’ corporate network. We immediately informed federal law enforcement, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and other relevant federal agencies. We are working closely with federal law enforcement authorities and have retained an independent computer forensics investigations firm to determine the precise nature and extent of any unlawful entry into our network. Experts who have reviewed the facts gathered to-date believe it has all the markings of a state-sponsored attack.
Cybercrime and attacks of this nature have become an epidemic that impacts businesses, government agencies, and financial and educational institutions alike. … Our systems and people identified this attack, and, in response, we are working alongside OPM, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and federal law enforcement authorities in redoubling our cyber security efforts. We are working collaboratively with OPM and DHS to resolve this matter quickly and look forward to resuming service on all our contracts with them as soon as possible. We will support the authorities in the investigation and any prosecution of those determined to be responsible for this criminal attack.
The Washington Post reported—
A major U.S. contractor that conducts background checks for the Department of Homeland Security has suffered a computer breach that probably resulted in the theft of employees’ personal information … it is unclear how many employees were affected, but officials said they believe the breach did not affect employees outside the department. …
Some lawmakers have announced they will investigate the breach. ‘It is extremely concerning that the largest private provider of background investigations to the government was hacked,’ said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. ‘I am asking Chairman [Darrell] Issa to work with me in having our committee investigate this matter with the utmost urgency.’ The USIS breach ‘is very troubling news,’ said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a Homeland Security Committee member. ‘Americans’ personal information should always be secure, particularly when our national security is involved. An incident like this is simply unacceptable.’
The next day, many news outlets (including Federal Times) reported that both DHS and OPM suspended USIS’ contract work. The Federal Times story stated—
The Department of Homeland Security has suspended background checks and most contracts with contractor USIS after a cyber attack may have accessed the personal information of DHS employees. … [The DHS spokesperson] said the agency has determined that some DHS personnel have had their personal information compromised and the agency has notified its entire workforce to monitor their financial accounts for suspicious activity. … DHS has also stopped providing sensitive information to USIS, according to a DHS official, which means that many of its contracts are in a state of suspension.
The financial results of being unable to perform contract work should be obvious. What may be less obvious, however, are the potential downstream effects for USIS associated with this situation. (See, for example, our discussions of data breaches at SAIC.) Suffice to say this situation has the potential to be catastrophic for the company.
Broken down to fundamentals, risk management consists of (1) identifying risks, (2) assessing those risks in terms of probability of occurrence and consequence, (3) establish mitigation strategies, (4) execute appropriate mitigation strategies at appropriate times, (5) monitor for inflection points. We cannot stress enough that government contractors need to consider the full panoply of risks associated with their program portfolios. We cannot stress enough that government contractors need to honestly evaluate both the probability of occurrence and the probable consequences of occurrence. We cannot stress enough that risk mitigation strategies need to be viewed as investments rather than as expenses.
There is a quantifiable ROI associated with cyber-security. But don’t take our word for it: just ask the folks at USIS.
Deceased Nigerian General Hides Millions in Overseas Bank Accounts
Have you seen this one?
CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Sir,
Good day and compliments. This letter will definitely come to you as a huge surprise, but I implore you to take the time to go through it carefully as the decision you make will go off a long way to determine the future and continued existence of the entire members of my family.
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dr. (Mrs.) Mariam Abacha, the wife of the late head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces of the federal republic of Nigeria who died on the 8th of June 1998. …
My late husband had/has Eighty Million USD ($80,000,000.00) specially preserved and well packed in trunk boxes of which only my husband and I knew about. It is packed in such a way to forestall just anybody having access to it. It is this sum that I seek your assistance to get out of Nigeria as soon as possible before the present civilian government finds out about it and confiscate it just like they have done to all our assets.
I implore you to please give consideration to my predicament and help a widow in need.
How about this one?
PRIVATE BUSINESS PROPOSAL.
Dr. Idris Musa
No. 16 Kingsway Road
Ikoyi, Lagos
Nigeria.
Tel/Fax: 234-1-7747907
30th March, 2000.
First I must solicit your confidence in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top secret. We are top officials of the Federal Government Contract Review Panel who are interested in importation of goods into our country with funds which are presently trapped in Nigeria. In order to commence this business we solicit your assistance to enable us RECIEVE the said trapped funds ABROAD.
The source of this fund is as follows : During the regime of our late head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha, the government officials set up companies and awarded themselves contracts which were grossly over-invoiced in various Ministries. The NEW CIVILIAN Government set up a Contract Review Panel (C.R.P) and we have identified a lot of inflated contract funds which are presently floating in the Central Bank of Nigeria (C.B.N).
However, due to our position as civil servants and members of this panel, we cannot acquire this money in our names. I have therefore, been delegated as a matter of trust by my colleagues of the panel to look for an Overseas partner INTO whose ACCOUNT the sum of US$31,000,000.00 (Thirty one Million United States Dollars) WILL BE PAID BY TELEGRAPHIC TRANSFER. Hence we are writing you this letter. We have agreed to share the money thus:
Look familiar? How about one more?
Forwarded
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 12:10:20 -0700
From: Abdul Abacha <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Subject: With the compliments of Abdul Abacha.
WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF ABDUL ABACHA
I am Alhaji Abdul Abacha, son of the late Head of State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, General Sanni Abacha who died under mysterious circumstances on the 8th of June 1998
After the death of my father, myself, and members of my family including my mother have been put through hell with interrogations, on account of corruption and mismanagement of public funds by my late father.
The aftermath of these interrogation has led to the continuous effort of the new President with co-operation from the Swiss government and other European countries to freeze, confiscate and recover monies belonging to my late father which were deposited in Swiss Bank accounts and in Bank Accounts in other European countries.
Our movement has been restricted, our travel documents seized and we have been forced to refund quite a huge amount of money which we earned through legitimate Government deals executed using the influence of my late father.
The reasons given by the present government for the harassment of my family constitutes a massive witch-hunting exercise by the numerous enemies made by my father in his bid to self succeed himself as President of Nigeria before his death.
These people presently control the socio-political structure and the economy of the country and are themselves guilty of the same crimes of non-accountability and probity leveled against my father.
It is a known fact that there is not one member of the present political class that have not been involved in corrupt practices in and out of the Government and have themselves amassed huge deposits in Foreign Banks.
Fortunately, just after the death of my father, my mother in anticipation of the present action of the new Government made arrangements to secretly move the sum of One Hundred and Fifty Five Million Dollars (US$155,000,000.00) in cash for safe-keeping in a security vault.
These funds have been in the vault since then and we feel that it is now necessary to move the funds out of Nigeria for fear of discovery and confiscation by the new regime in Nigeria.
We are therefore seeking a business partner with banking co-coordinates capable of accommodating such huge amounts and is able to manage or nominate trustees to manage these funds in the interim as we watch the political situation in Nigeria unfolds.
The foregoing are a few examples of the many variations of the “Nigerian 419 Scam.” According to Wikipedia, “The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, which the fraudster requires a small up-front payment to obtain. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim, or simply disappears.” Now most of us realize immediately that such an offer is obviously a scam. We delete the email and move on with our lives. As Wikipedia notes, “One reason Nigeria may have been singled out is the apparently comical, almost ludicrous nature of the promise of West African riches from a Nigerian Prince. According to Cormac Herley, a researcher for Microsoft, ‘By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible, the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select.’”
But there may be a nugget of truth buried in these email offers. You may have deleted something that was not, in fact, completely “ludicrous.” At least, the U.S. Government took some aspect of General Abacha’s alleged wealth seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it “forefeited” $480 Million of funds, and is seeking another $148 Million—bringing the Nigerian dictator’s known family wealth to roughly $628 Million. The U.S. Government would like it all, and is pursuing the funds in bank accounts located around the world.
That’s right. The General, his son, and at least one associate “systemically embezzled billions of dollars in public funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria.” They allegedly “withdrew the funds in cash and then moved the money overseas through U.S. financial institutions.”
Would you like to know more, courtesy of a recent Department of Justice press release?
The Department of Justice has forfeited more than $480 million in corruption proceeds hidden in bank accounts around the world by former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and his co-conspirators. …
The judgment is the result of a civil forfeiture complaint the department filed in November 2013 against more than $625 million in the largest kleptocracy forfeiture action brought in the department’s history. The forfeiture judgment includes approximately $303 million in two bank accounts in the Bailiwick of Jersey, $144 million in two bank accounts in France, and three bank accounts in the United Kingdom and Ireland with an expected value of at least $27 million. The ultimate disposition of the funds will follow the execution of the judgment in each of these jurisdictions. Claims to an additional approximately $148 million in four investment portfolios in the United Kingdom are pending. …
So, yeah. There really was a Nigerian General Abacha. He really had a son. They really did have millions upon millions of dollars hidden in banks in multiple countries. They really did launder their ill-gotten gains. All that stuff is true.
What is less true, of course, is that you could have a piece of that fortune if only you would join the conspiracy. The real conspirators never needed your help; they did just fine laundering the funds on their own. And now the U.S. Government is collecting as much of that dirty laundered money as it can locate, and we believe it will eventually be returned to the Nigerian citizenry, from whom it was originally stolen.
So keep deleting those emails.
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