Aerospace Corp Pays $2.5m To Settle Rogue Software Dev Case

chrb writes "U.S. company Aerospace Corp. has paid $2.5 million to settle a case that they defrauded the U.S. Air Force by knowingly billing for the services of a rogue software developer. The rogue developer, William Grayson Hunter, was being paid for two full time jobs at two different aerospace companies, but spent most of his time in bars, amusement parks and movie theaters. On some days, he billed his employers for over 24 hours' work."

Comments

Creative billing

[Anonymous Coward]

"On some days, he billed his employers for over 24 hours work."

Never challenge lawyers at their own game.

Re:Creative billing

[Iron Condor]

There is, of course, the possibility that the man was just a good coder who was handed jobs that were bid as "six months of a full-time programmer" which he then slapped together in an afternoon of wild hacking and then just billed for the rest of the time while sitting in a bar. Pulling this off at two different employers at the same ime is impressive, but since employers don't exactly talk to each other who's just hired on I can easily see how one could fly under the radar like this.

Re:Creative billing

[jroysdon]

Some of the best ideas and designs start on napkins. Might have been research/think time.

If I'm solving a problem for a customer in the shower, should I not bill for that time if I'm getting results (especially when I'm holding down two jobs, and my personal time is where I fit my second job)? Granted, I shouldn't be able to bill for all my shower time, but time specifically devoted to a customer, sure, it's legit.

I do some of my best thinking while sleeping (and prepping before going to bed) and usually piece it together in the shower. I just can't get much think time once I'm taking the kids to school or getting interrupted at my day job or in the evening until the kids get to bed.

If I want to write it down while at lunch on a napkin, that's totally billable. Granted, I only do so in quarter hour chunks and I keep accurate time.

Further, there is nothing wrong with double or even triple billing (beyond that, and I think you're going to be kidding yourself at your multitasking skills). Take for instance patching VoIP servers back Cisco CallManagers ran on Windows 2000 and required tons of reboots for the OS, SQL, CCM app, Security Agent, etc. Say I know it is going to take 1 hour to do the patching, and another 15 minutes prior going through my check lists, and 15 minutes post to verify everything is good. So if I have 3 customers that I'm going to patch in one night, so I do it serially or in parallel? I'm going to do it in parallel and triple bill some of that time. I start first pre-patching checklist, then patching. Then I do the second per-patching check-list, and patching. Finally I start the third pre-patching checklist, and patching. Time for a quick bathroom break and then time to start the post-patching check of customer 1, then 2, then 3. Sure, if I run into a snag with one customer I have to pause all the billing for the other customers, but that's on me, and it's also why we have redundant systems.

Yeah, that's how to do it. Customers each get billed 1.5 hours. Takes me 2 hours to do it total, I bill 4.5. Everyone gets what they asked for, I'm efficient with my time, win win.

Now, billing >24 hours in a day, that would take some gravitational time dilation, and even then I think it's only on the order of seconds, not hours more per day.

Re:Creative billing

[Anachragnome]

"...There is, of course, the possibility that the man was just a good coder who was handed jobs that were bid as "six months of a full-time programmer" which he then slapped together in an afternoon of wild hacking."

This.

As a mechanic I was paid commission--I got 45% of the labor charge to the customer. Let's use a specific job as an example--4 ball-joints on an S-10 Blazer. An estimating guide (book time) is used by most shops to estimate costs for customers as well as billing. Michell guide puts this job at 6.0 hours. That is what the customer is charged, simple as that--6 hours at the going shop rate.

Now here is where I come in. Since I have done this particular job many, many times, I know exactly what tools to take out of my tool box and set up on a cart. I know exactly what order to do things in, used multiple air hoses so I didn't waste time swapping out air tools, etc. I can actually do this 6 hour job in just over an hour. So I get paid for 45% of 6 hours labor for doing one hour of labor. Sounds like I'm ripping people off, right? Wrong, and here is why.

If I rush that job and fuck it up for any reason, I have to do it OVER FOR FREE. I do not make money doing things over, so I have incentive to do it right the first time. The guy that is paid hourly has no reason to care--he might get fired eventually, but he'll get paid even for doing it again as long as he is on the clock. I got paid really well for my time because I kicked some ass, learned my trade and performed not just well, but well beyond what was expected--I was able to do the job so efficiently that it literally took me 1/6th of the time to do it. I should get paid less for that? Trust me, this is a rare example of that kind of efficiency--most of the time I roughly matched book times on most jobs. If it was a particularly big job (head gasket, tranny rebuild, etc), I would actually exceed the book times by quite a bit--it was a safe bet to be extra careful as rebuilding a transmission twice and only getting paid once sucks. Some jobs were quick and well paying, some were slow and not-so-good paying. They balanced out.

The point is that I was paid to do a specific job, not to be on the fucking clock. As long as the job gets done, why should it matter if I'm in a bar scribbling notes on napkins?

I think the issue here is that dude was entirely dishonest in almost every way he could have been. But other then that, did the guy actually do what he was paid to do?

First Post

[PPH]

People need to be at their desk, putting in an honest 8 hours trying to get First Post.

Re:First Post

[PPH]

Try harder. :-P

Why? We're still going to bill the DoD for a First Post.

Wow...

[deatypoo]

I guess you need to be this obvious if you want to get caught over-billing the government

Re:Wow...

[TWX]

Thing I don't get is that the federal government normally requires defense contractors and the like to keep very, very close track of what employees do and to which programs they bill their time, down to the decimalized hour, essentially six-minute intervals. Technically an employee is supposed to charge time to go to the bathroom back to the company itself instead of to a particular program. The whole point of such an asinine system is to keep this kind of fraud from being possible, and to attempt to keep employees working on a particular project on-task.

I guess that the "system worked" in that they did eventually catch on to the fraud, and took some kind of action because of it. I would actually blame the companies much more than the individual himself, though he does have plenty of culpability. I don't see how the employee's actions could have gone unnoticed by the companies.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, what planet are you on?

Here at MCCHORD AFB (now Joint Base Lewis-McChord), our Desk Top PC maintenance is contracted. At one time it was General Dynamics, but now I'm not sure who it is.

The *Main Dude* in charge of IT for the [ Group Name Deleted ] is a big fat dude who spends most of the day drinking in his car. True, he's got a bunch of twenty-somethings doing the work he should be doing, but GOOD FUCKING GRIEF.

One of his geeks is this gimpy dude who can install a printer, but takes a fucking HOUR.

The other dude is openly stealing software / hardware and will sell you something if you need it.

Did I mention these three jokers have SIPRNET access?

Re:Wow...

[rbmyers]

One consideration in my leaving the Aerospace Corporation when I did is that I wondered if anyone would notice my absence at any time other than lunch. The irony of the situation is that fining the Aerospace Corporation is a bit like the Federal Government fining itself, as no one but the Federal Government has any pecuniary interest in the Aerospace Corporation as a corporate entity--it might as well be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the US Air Force.
Although no one ever said so explicitly, I assume that the bizarre legal status of the Aerospace Corporation was to allow it to operate free from the constraints that govern civil service employees and profit-making defense contractors. Furthermore, the fact that the Aerospace Corp. was privy to so many highly-sensitive programs made it seem natural that no one knew what anyone else was doing--even it the employee was doing nothing.

Re:Wow...

[RKBA]

I once had a Section Manager who came up with a "cook book" of hours each employee should charge to each of the various project numbers regardless of what they were actually working on in order for the Section he managed (several hundred employees) to always balance its budget exactly. Please note that there are very strict government rules against allowing, much less demanding that employees charge their time to anything other than the job number for the work they are actually doing, and many of us rebelled against this obviously immoral and illegal procedure of his. Eventually he was caught, but there was no public censure. After a short while he was transferred to some other management position at the government funded company.

24 hours of work per day is possible

[Jeremi]

Keep in mind that people have dual-core brains, so if they parallelize their tasks properly they can work as many as 48 hours in a day. (I don't recommend overclocking though, speed kills)

Re:24 hours of work per day is possible

[SirGarlon]

96 hours if you learn the mystical SuperSymmetry of the time cube.

Rogue developer??

[new death barbie]

Sounds like there was no development involved. If an accountant steals money by cooking the books, he's not a 'rogue accountant'. He's an embezzler.

This guy is a fraud and a cheat. Nothing rogue about him.

A good start...

[hedgemage]

You know, what really needs to be done to keep military contractors from defrauding the government, and thereby the US taxpayer is to start prosecuting cases as treason rather than slap-on-the-wrist fines. Every dollar that these parasites siphon from the DoD is a dollar less defending the US from legitimate threats, or at least a dollar less that the American people should be taxed. In these times of tight budgets and the prospect of painful cuts to both civilian and military programs, we should pursue those who seek to cheat the US military and treat them no differently than we would someone who is providing material aid and comfort to those who wish to do us harm.
An organization that had no problems charging the Air Force for 'work' done by someone that they knew was simply an empty desk shows an absolute disregard for the taxpayers and the brave men and women in the military who serve to protect the US by putting themselves in harm's way. IMO this company got off easy when they should have faced the corporate death penalty.

Re:What's rogue about him?

[antifoidulus]

Well, it was only a matter of time, those 26 hour days are killer.

Overbilling? Install SAP

[lucm]

A former client of mine (Fortune 500) is using SAP for the timesheets, and it's not possible to save the timesheet if there is more or less than exactly 8 hours billed in a day. Hugely convenient, unless someone is interested by reality.

Sophisticated Methods

[monoqlith]

"This person was hired before we had sophisticated methods to verify international degrees," Aerospace spokeswoman Pamela Keeton said in a statement. "He failed to disclose his other employment as required."

Sophisticated methods...like calling them and asking.

I used to work at Aerospace

[Anonymous Coward]

The Aerospace Corporation is a great place to work if you are good at what you do and you love your job. You are given responsibility and are expected, without indoctrination, to be honest, true to the projects you work on, to the company's customers, your managers and your co-workers. The company is set up as a not-for-profit and it does not manufacture or compete, placing it in the position that it can be let in to what may be private and proprietary among competing defense contractors because Aerospace represents the interests of the government (the customer). It is inexcusable that the government was overcharged. Though I do not know the circumstances of this overcharge, I can tell you that there are projects the customer sets up where oversight can be artificially limited. Highly classified projects may give access to an extremely small number of people. I've experienced where my boss had no clue what I was doing on a project. The annual review went something like this...

Boss: So, how have you been doing?

Me: Great!

Boss: I asked and they said you're OK. I asked if they wanted to change you out. They said no.

Me: (annoyed) Thanks for sharing, got to get back to it.

Boss: Good meeting.

My boss could not know what I was working on due to customer imposed constraint. I did my job well, he believed me, and you, dear taxpayer, got more than your money's worth. Could I have abused the system? My thoughts never went there at the time, but looking back on it, it could have taken a couple of years for someone to be administratively allowed to take my place so, yeah, it was possible. I never learned of this happening, there certainly was no culture to support such behavior, and since we were, in essence, protecting ourselves by protecting you, it was not in our best interests to shortchange any project.

Aerospace holds others and itself to the highest levels of expectation. Someone who has passed extensive government background check is, by definition, trustworthy. Even if they were duped they are responsible. They've done the responsible thing, have demonstrated they are not above the rules, will figure out ways to not be duped like this again, and can go back to making certain we continue to be safe and that our tax dollars are spent more effectively.

Re:I used to work at Aerospace

[tsotha]

Heh. I never worked for Arerospace Corp, but when I was doing military projects I had the same surreal experience. My boss didn't have a "need to know", so he just went by whatever the program office said. Since it was R&D type work the program office didn't really know how long things should take. And I worked in a vault, so it wasn't like someone could have stumbled in and caught me sleeping. I could probably have gotten away with working one day out of three.

But I didn't abuse it either. If you're on the right project your work amounts to a really cool hobby for which someone else is picking up the enormous tab.

He wasn't a software developer

[edko]

Mr. Hunter wasn't a software developer. He was a software quality assurance guy.

His degree was from OXFORD

[gillbates]

Sure, his company could have called - if they had someone who knew how to speak BRITISH.

Language barriers allow these sorts of things to go unnoticed for years.