A whistle blower in Mississippi may have prevented millions of dollars in losses thanks to bid rigging.
The man went an awful long way to find an attorney.
Government contracts can mean big business, and shady dealings.
"Well we’ve all heard of the toilet seat that costs thousands of dollars, that’s why. We could go down to some place and buy ones, but the contractors, for lack of competition take advantage of that," says attorney Gary Galiher.
In this case it was a security contract for NASA, and it caused David Magee of Mississippi to take an extraordinary step.
"Often times whistle blowers have their whole careers in jeopardy when they want to come forward with wrong doing. This particular whistle blower, very, very smart, wanted to go as far away as he could from his local town so information didn’t leak out," Galiher says.
As for how Galiher’s firm came to be contacted all the way back in 2006.
"A sophisticated computer, somebody like our plaintiff, very, very smart. And he wanted to get capable counsel and I think the call came at four in the morning and we talked to him," he says.
Galiher’s firm reached an agreement worth nearly $23 million in the case. The bid rigging revolved around a contract worth a potential $3.2 billion.
"Contractors know each other, and behind the scenes bid rigging goes on. And in this particular case, information was leaked to the successful bidder as to where it was going to go. And the other non-successful bidders just sort of backed off," he says.
Galiher says this kind of fraud is prevalent because contractor oversight is light if at all.
"If our billion dollars of taxpayer money is going for defense as we appropriately need, a huge percentage of that is squandered and wasted by government fraud," he says.
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
