Ethics Fraud Case

The fraud case I chose to look at was a former Department of Defense contractor that is being sentenced to nine years in jail for exploiting his public position. The contractor, Robert J. Stein, pleaded guilty on February 2, 2006 to being a felon in procession of a firearm, procession of machine guns, bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy in connection with a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority in al-Hillah, Iraq (Former).

Robert Stein bribed governmental officials and high ranking officers to award all contracts to his company. In exchange, Stein gave the officials money, cars, jewelry, a motorcycle, airline tickets, future employment, and liquor among other items. On top of that, Stein laundered over two million dollars meant for the reconstruction of Iraq from the company he worked for, the Coalition Provisional Authority, while serving as their Comptroller and Funding Officer. In total Robert Stein received 8.6 million dollars' worth of rigged contracts (Former). For his fraud, Stein has received nine years in prison and 3 years of supervised release.

I agree with the punishment that Stein received for bribery and laundering. As a contractor he is supposed to bid for contracts and then follow through on the bids. Stein showed that he could care less about what he was actually supporting, as long as he got money for it. He also took two million dollars that was supposed to go towards the rebuilding of Iraq. While soldiers are over there putting their life on the line while trying to keep the peace with what's left, Stein was looking out for himself. I believe that even though he has cooperated throughout the investigation, Robert Stein should be put away for at least 20 years for what I see as actions against the United States military.

After the case, and several others I'm sure, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty announce the National Procurement Fraud Initiative to be fully active (Former). The program is designed to promote early detection, identification, prevention and prosecution of procurement fraud associated with the increase in contracting activity for national security and other government programs (Former). Along with this the Deputy Attorney General has created the Procurement Fraud Task Force, which will basically keep an eye out and prosecute anyone found guilty.

I believe that in this case Stein should have been monitored by someone above him at all times. If he was getting contracts worth millions he should have had somebody checking where everything was going related to the contract. Although he is in the wrong, his management failed him by giving him the temptation and freedom to commit such fraud. If I were his manager I would have made sure that there were checks and balances with the contractors. Also, as I learned from MGT 345, I would have made sure that as a company we would have an ethical code that would emphasize how important we are to