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Snowden's Former Employer Under Criminal Investigation For Fraudulent Billing (boozallen.com)
McGruber writes: Booz Allen Hamilton, the contracting firm that was Edward Snowden's employer when he leaked classified information from the NSA has announced that it is under a federal civil and criminal investigation of its billing practices. The disclosure in a regulatory filing sent shares of parent company Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. tumbling $7.33, or 18.6 percent, to $32 in Friday trading.
Why is Edward Snowden's former employment (on the consulting side) relevant to what their accountants are doing? After all, we're talking about a corporation of 22000 people here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton
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My employer occasionally hired these management consultants thirty years ago. At that time, they were very adept at interviewing the management, and then telling them a summarized version that confirmed their preconceptions. Do I have a low opinion of "management consultants"? Yes, but I'm a technical person who works from logical principles.
Everyone in Defense knows that ever since GWOT, these companies have been over-billing. Their former-government friends are the ones running these companies, and promising hefty paychecks to those who leave the military or civil service for contracting. Boozers have a poor reputation in the defense industry, too, so it comes as no surprise.
The Firm C'mon fraudulent billing?
And nothing will come of it, save perhaps a slap on the wrist, and maybe some other contractors taking a bit of their turf until THEY are caught defrauding the government.
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I worked on government contracts at a large company. The manager of our group would routinely direct the team to falsify time sheets. When I left the company, I informed HR and as far as I understand it, after a brief investigation he was actually promoted.
Why are you painting Snowden and Booz Allen Hamilton with the same brush?
Are you inferring that they were - in some way - complicit with his acts?
You are being purposely misleading.
While you are at it, change your handle from:
EditorDavid
TO
WannabejournalistDavid
Under Arrest! LOCK THEM UP! Hahaha! The IRONING!
For example:
"Snowden's Former Employer Under Criminal Investigation For Fraudulent Billing", though the fact that Snowden was employed at one time has nothing to do with the fraudulent billing.
"Former CenturyLink Employee Accuses Company of Running a Wells Fargo-Like Scheme" when it has nothing to do with Wells Fargo, thus dragging down Well Fargo more for something CenturyLink is doing.
"Trump-Style Tactics Finally Stopped Working For Uber" which has nothing to do with Trump or Trump-style tactics, just trying to link the 2 to cause an emotional response, but no real connection.
Is this just to cause clickbait articles? or why is this happening?
Take off your hat and stay a while.
Not everybody knows who BAH is. So by giving a tidbit about who worked for them draws a picture into people's minds.
I agree it's all clickbait. But it isn't some slashdot conspiracy.
Meanwhile...
Thank you for being a frienddddddd
Travel down the road and back again
Ahhh fuck it.
what about moveing staff in house??
It should cost about the same with works getting about the same or more pay. All the overhead with a lot of contractors / sub contractors does add up as well lot's of over billing and under timing just to force them to extend
From the linked news release it appears to center on how indirect costs were charged to contracts. Gov't contracts often allow overhead and iota indirect costs to be allocated to a contract and charged; you have to be careful how you allocate and the source of the cost. For example, a research institute I worked for had a government contract, and we reserved a conference room for exclusive use as well as had a separate supplies closet of office supplies to be used when working on the contract. No one was allowed to use the conference room unless it was for that specific contact; which lead to a lot of upset people when we told them even if it was empty they can't use; that ensured we were properly charging the cost of that space to the government and not have to jump through hoops to distinguish gov't contract and other work and adjust charges properly. As for the supplies, we kept that under lock and key. We did this things not to be jerks but to avoid having someone with handcuffs and a warrant show up at our door telling us we were now getting free room and board from the government.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The reason big government contractors get so much work is not because most government agencies would prefer it that way. Most would rather do things in house. any efficiency arguments aside, it makes their little empire bigger. Rather it is because there is pressure at the top to do business with contractors who, unsurprisingly, are big donors.
How do those "benched" employees support themselves while they are billing "zero hours" on the contract? No billing means no money to pay them. Think it through, it's not complicated.
There are so many companies contracted to the federal government. And I bet if their billing practices were all audited a majority of them would be found improperly billing.
A consultant is perpetual billing.
Intentional or not (usually intentional), it's more self-serving: More billable hours.
It may sound biased, but unfortunately my experience as a contractor has shown me more often than not that the govt couldn't find its ass with both hands. This is usually an effect of the govt being a large bureaucracy with govt employees who don't care that much if the project succeeds or fails. Remember, the govt never went out of business...
Large companies can afford to keep paying employees that are not directly generating revenue. Usually they are either in training, or working on internal projects, both of which enable the company to improve what it can do for clients later.
"What you do" is not to defraud the client.
I think you are saying that this was a contract where the client got to approve the specific people, not just the job/billing categories, that work on it? And the contract had no clause for agreeing on replacements if needed? Agreeing to such a contract is risky, and your company paid the price of doing so.
But I also have wonder: 3 of the 4 named people "quit within a month", and gave so little notice that they didn't stay up to that deadline? Either your company did a really crappy job of gauging their likelihood of staying before it nominated them, or they all had unexpected medical issues, or there was something unexpected and very bad about the client or the actual work. In the latter 2 cases at least the company could have room to work with the client on any needed contract mod.