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SAIC Settles CityTime Case For $500.4 Million
First time accepted submitter arnott writes "Science Applications International Corp. said that it will pay $500.4 million in restitution and penalties under a settlement over its CityTime program with New York City. From the article: 'Two former SAIC employees have been charged with conspiring to defraud New York, and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) has called on the company to reimburse the city for the more than $600 million it spent on the program over an 11-year period.'"
So who will be the one to keep all that money?
I can hardly believe that the money will be spent for other projects or the citizens of NYC.
It's money they've already spent and it will be returned to the coffers of NYC. The next NYC budget proposal is for more than $68 billion. I'm sure they'll find a way to spend it.
having had experience with SAIC in the past - one wonders how they remain in business when most of the projects turn out to be crap and have to be redone?
It's money they've already spent and it will be returned to the coffers of NYC.
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Securities/News/2012/03_-_March/SAIC_to_pay_NY_City_$500_mln_in_fraud_case/
"SAIC agreed to pay $370.4 million in restitution to the city, as well as a penalty of $130 million, according to a deferred prosecution agreement made public on Wednesday. The city will get $96 million of the penalty, with the rest going to the federal government."
So that would be $466 million total, but..
"In addition, New York City will not have to pay about $40 million of the bills it was charged."
So all in all, the judgement nets NYC $506 million.
They hosted nice free user group on GUI design in their building 12 years ago.
Other than that it's a very big corporation with links to the military industrial complex.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I live and work in NYC. The Washington Post might love kissing billionaire technocrat ass, but Bloomberg didn't get this money back. In fact Bloomberg is responsible for letting SAIC rob over $600M on this contract, all the way until the bitter end while Bloomberg defended SAIC and its "cost overruns". As he finally admitted last Summer. It's the Federal prosecutor, Manhatttan US Attorney Preet Bharara, who clawed back this money. Though indeed even Bharara couldn't get it all back: the ripoff claimed $652M, the court awarded $540M, and the city might get from $466-518M. Meanwhile Bloomberg whined that getting the $500M wasn't done "in a more pleasant way". (FWIW, when his bankster cops were macing women on public sidewalks last Summer, he had no complaint that it couldn't be done in a more pleasant way). Bloomberg says we now have a functioning system "at a very reasonable cost", because he's not including all the costs of recovering the money in court. He defended this ripoff until the bitter end, and continues to spin it.
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Humanity? This is faith in the courts. If SAIC had been convicted instead of merely agreeing to keep a little more than it originally contracted, it could have lost much of the government contracts that are over 80% of its very big business.
The court told SAIC that its gamble here didn't pay off, but it didn't lose anything either. Try it again with a different city, a different court, and the law of averages (or bribery) could give you a 5:1 payoff!
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make install -not war
and just like that my faith in humanity has been restored.
Only after the threat of jail time for the bosses...and only for one company out of the many thousands that have stolen public money lately.
No sig today...
Admittedly I have no experience with city contracts and living in a different country I don't know much about american government's procurement process but it seems to me that all their deals will be put under a microscope from now on. I wouldn't be surprised if they lost their government contracts anyway, regardless of the fine. Fact that an actual huge multinational corporation has actually been found guilty is what gives me hope.
Critics say city employees could have done the work far less expensively. Bills spiraled out of control over the years, hitting $692 million, and city investigators brought federal prosecutors into the probe after uncovering payments routed through shell companies.
...
SAIC agreed to pay $370.4 million in restitution to the city, as well as a penalty of $130 million, according to a deferred prosecution agreement made public on Wednesday. The city will get $96 million of the penalty, with the rest going to the federal government.
In addition, New York City will not have to pay about $40 million of the bills it was charged.
Let me see if I got this right:
-$692 million in bills +$40 million in canceled bills + $370.4 million in restitution + $(130-96) million in penalty payments = -$247.6 million
Shouldn't the restitution payment at least cover how much NYC originally paid?
Admittedly I have no experience with city contracts and living in a different country I don't know much about american government's procurement process but it seems to me that all their deals will be put under a microscope from now on. I wouldn't be surprised if they lost their government contracts anyway, regardless of the fine. Fact that an actual huge multinational corporation has actually been found guilty is what gives me hope.
They technically have not been found guilty of anything. had they been tried and found guilty, then they could have been barred from receiving new contracts but a settlement doesn't do that. At best some agencies may look at this and have second thoughts; but even so it may be tough, under the FAR (Fed Acquisition Regs)*, to not award them a contract on which they are the qualified low bidder simply because of the NYC settlement.
More than likely it will have little, if any, impact on SAIC's ability to win contracts. Oteh regencies will probably chalk it up to the typical implementation spat when a s/w project has problems.
* If you really want a sense of how Byzantine the FARs are; drop by the Defense Acquisition Portal https://dap.dau.mil/Pages/Default.aspx
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Legal fees?
Is that given their federal track record, why would NYC give them something like this? Their prior performance at the federal level looks like the killing fields of Cambodia done on a bank statement. They're an institutional argument of why cost alone should never be a factor in awarding a contract; bang-for-the-buck instead because the feds have almost without fail gotten exactly what they've paid for from this company.
The bigger scam is that SAIC sub-contracted the project out to TechnoDyne LLC and paid them $400M. TechoDyno executives Reddy and Padma Allen a married couple were naturalized American citizens from India. Padma Allen, at least, was a businesswoman of some standing: a medical doctor by training, she attended a White House briefing in December on minority business issues, and she was named one of Ernst & Young’s entrepreneurs of the year in New Jersey in 2010. However, the New York Times said, the couple has apparently fled to India as the fraud was being uncovered "and their whereabouts are unknown to federal authorities."
Except that it's Obama's Federal attorney who got the money back. It's Republican Bloomberg who helped SAIC rob it.
You Republicans have a very limited playbook: commit a crime, and blame the Democrat who catches you. It's a mental disease.
Calling Bloomberg a Republican isn't exactly accurate... until 2001, he was a Democrat. Then he switched to the Republican party--until he declared himself an Independent in 2007. I think it's fair to simply call him a corrupt, opportunistic scumbag. Of course, this is true of most politicians.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
As someone who coded on the this project, (too low level to know about any theft or graft), I would say the city has gotten a real bargin. The big problem on the project is that the city is very complex and city workers are very poor at communicating that complexity into requirements. SAIC wasn't the first company to work on the project, a bunch of money was spent on the first few companies that did the work. The city had widely underestimated what it would take to make the product work, and how much the unions would push back against employees actually having to report when they showed up for work.
Important points
1. The system works pretty well, most articles about it do mention this.
2. The system handles time reporting for everything from office workers, to fireman. From regular 9-5 shifts to fireman 36hour stints. Unfortunately for NYC and its crazy union rules an off the self solution wasn't possible. Union contracts are very complex and the system handles paying people based on those contracts, which no one really understands.
3. The most important thing for city workers who I interviewed for requirements was the ability to lie about when they worked, how long they worked, weather they worked at all, and what they were doing during work. The system made this very hard, the unions made implementation very expensive. This isn't about judging people, it is just reality.
5. Big IT projects like this often fail, this is a reality in our business. SAIC despite the fraud, which should be punished, actually succeeded. And lots of really good work went into making that project successful.
Except that it's Obama's Federal attorney who got the money back. It's Republican Bloomberg who helped SAIC rob it.
Modding him flamebait pretty much proves his point. Jesus, guys, wtf is wrong with you?
Now waste some mod points on me so you'll not have so many left to mod down other informative comments. You won't hurt my karma.
Free Martian Whores!
...I don't know much about american government's procurement process but it seems to me that all their deals will be put under a microscope from now on....
That is soooooo cute.
Let me learn you on the american government process:
1. Cheat the government
2. Get found guilty
3. Make campaign contributions, to ensure contracts keep getting sent your way
4. PROFIT!
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
They're probably trollmodding me because of
As for karma, I've been trollmodded literally thousands of times on Slashdot for well over a decade now. There have been whole armies of trollmods, organized globally to attack me - I've seen their websites and IRCs (not dedicated to me, but I had my high slot in their rotation). Who cares? They're the ones with the mental disease. I'm the one with time to waste posting the truth.
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Odd that my comment quoting and defending your was modded informative while your original comment was downmodded. I was hoping someone with points would mod yours up, but at least I got your point seen.
I miss the old metamoderation, modding someone "troll" or "flamebait" when you disagreed with them kept you from getting more points. It doesn't seem that way now.
Free Martian Whores!