On Oct. 10, 2006, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty announced a new national procurement fraud initiative and a National Procurement Fraud Task Force (“Task Force”). This new Task Force, a partnership between the De-partment of Justice’s Civil and Criminal Divisions, U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and other federal law enforcement agencies, was created to increase coordination among federal law enforcement and “to intensify the government’s detection efforts and to continue prosecuting those who defraud taxpayers.”
The Task Force will be focusing resources at all levels of government to in-crease enforcement in procurement fraud areas. These areas include defective pricing or other irregularities in the pricing and formation of contracts, prod-uct substitution, misuse of classified and procurement sensitive information, false claims, grant fraud, labor discharging, accounting fraud, fraud involving foreign military sales, ethics and conflict of interest violations, and public cor-ruption associated with procurement fraud. By establishing this Task Force, DOJ is sending a message that procurement fraud investigations are a priority for the agency, and we should plan on seeing DOJ aggressively pursuing more cases in the procurement fraud arena.
This article is presented for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.