James Delayo, a former inspector for the New York City Dept. of Buildings, has pleaded guilty to taking cash payments in exchange for falsifying paperwork relating to crane inspections and certifying crane-operator exams. He is recommended to receive a two- to six-year prison sentence after being charged with bribe-receiving in the second degree, considered to be a Class C felony. “This is another case where responsibility and safety were trumped by greed,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. “These crimes threaten the industry that built our great city, and this fraud hurts the honest business owners and employees who
After nearly a week of extra-innings deliberation, a New York City jury finally convicted regional concrete testing giant Testwell Laboratories on Feb. 25 of racketeering stemming from allegations it filed fake test results on more than 80 buildings. Testwell Laboratories, its CEO, V. Reddy Kancharla, and Vice President Vincent Barone were found guilty of enterprise corruption, which carries a mandatory prison term of one year and could put the two executives behind bars for as many as 25 years. "Testwell’s conduct was reprehensible not only for its pattern of theft and deception, but for its utter disregard for the safety
Three months after he was arrested for allegedly defrauding former employers URS Corp. and STV Corp., and clients, of more than $3 million in allegedly fabricated expenses, George Papadopoulos, an engineer and former vice president of those companies, will be in court March 22 following a not guilty plea to federal fraud and larceny charges last month in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston. He was released on $25,000 bail. “As a construction project manager, Mr. Papadopoulos had authority and discretion to make expenditures and seek reimbursement for them,” says a statement released on his behalf. “He believes these expenses are
German prosecutor officials are investigating possible criminal falsification of construction survey data on Cologne’s roughly $550 million North-South urban rail project, scene of a building collapse last March. In parallel, diaphragm walls being used in construction of one the line’s underground stations have been found to be about 80% short of specified dowel bars. These, as yet unconnected, findings recently emerged from investigations into the March 3, 2009 collapse of the city’s historical archive building. The building was undermined when a section of railroad tunnel under construction in nearby Waidmarkt collapsed. No official cause for the tunnel failure has yet
The New York City district attorney’s criminal indictment of Manhattan-based construction management and interiors firm The Builders Group for stealing nearly $7 million from five private-sector clients now accompanies ongoing civil lawsuits by those owners. The Jan. 27 indictment against the firm, its president George Figliolia and two other executives, charges them with a kickback scheme on projects such as condo conversions and office renovations that inflated construction costs through submission of false subcontractor bills between 2006 and 2009. Names of clients were not disclosed in the indictment, but the firm previously cited work for firms such as AT&T, Tiffany’s
The PBSJ Corp., a Tampa-based architecture, engineering and construction firm, is conducting an internal investigation into whether its subsidiary, PBS&J International Inc., broke the law in pursuing projects overseas. The $618-million, employee-owned company disclosed the investigation in a Dec. 30 filing to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. In the filing, it told the SEC that it could not file its required year-end annual report for 2009 on time because the audit committee of its board of directors was seeking “to determine whether any laws have been violated, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, in connection with certain projects undertaken
The U.S. Energy Dept.’s inspector general on Dec. 30 cleared a top DOE official in charge of overseeing the agency’s $6 billion of stimulus spending of abusing her authority related to spending at the agency’s Savannah River site in Aiken, S.C. But investigators said they found a toxic work atmosphere at the facility, poisoned by charges of “racism and reverse discrimination.” In a three-page report, Inspector General Gregory Friedman said he found no conclusive evidence that the official, Cynthia Anderson, engaged in any wrongdoing. She was not identified by name in the version of the report publicly released. But according
U.S. District Court Judge Sterling Johnson, sitting in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Nov. 25 named two attorneys, including a former federal corruption prosecutor, to probe continuing graft allegations against two key operating engineers’ locals in New York City. The appointment of George A. Stamboulidis follows a 2008 consent decree with Locals 14 and 14B that settled civil racketeering charges against union officials that included mob influence in hiring, particularly for crane operating positions. The decree noted anticorruption steps the locals had taken, but union officials also agreed to take additional measures.
When Ireland-based recruitment firm Parc U.K. Ltd. in 2003 began to offer British contractors outsourced worker staffing services, it was pioneering a new way of doing business in the U.K. construction market. Six competitors, who responded by forming a “cartel” against it, now face fines totalling $61.2 million. As the biggest cartel member, Hays plc, London, was fined $48 million by the government’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) late last month. That fine was discounted by 30% because the firm agreed to cooperate with investigators. Without the cooperation discounts the firms’ fines would have totaled $273 million, reflecting the “serious
The University of Georgia Athletic Association has dropped Hardin Construction Co. as prime contractor on an $18.6-million expansion of an office and practice facility building in Athens, Ga., because of concern following the Dec. 19, 2008, collapse of a deck section that killed one worker at a Hardin project at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. “We didn’t want additional attention brought to the [new] project while that incident is being investigated,” says Arthur Johnson, associate athletic director. Atlanta-based Hardin is contesting a proposed safety fine over the accident. Although the final contract for the expansion project at Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall had