{"id":60879,"date":"2015-07-16T12:39:37","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T16:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=60879"},"modified":"2015-07-16T12:39:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T16:39:37","slug":"guardsmen-charged-in-contract-bribery-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=60879","title":{"rendered":"Guardsmen charged in contract bribery case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen sends us links to the Justice Department<\/a> announcement that four high ranking military officers of the National Guard have been indicted for their participation in a bribery scheme designed to steer government contracts to their company, MPSC;<\/p>\n

Edwin Stuart Livingston III, 67, of The Villages, Florida; Ronald Joseph Tipa, 68, of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida; Thomas Edward Taylor, 66, of Alexandria, Virginia; and Ross Bernard DeBlois Sr., 55, of Fairfax Station, Virginia, are each charged by indictment with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, one count of bribery of a public official, one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and five counts of honest services fraud.<\/p>\n

According to the indictment, Livingston, Tipa, Taylor and John Jones, 77, a retired brigadier general from the New York Army National Guard, each owned 25 percent of MPSC and constituted MPSC\u2019s Board of Directors. DeBlois was the company\u2019s CEO. <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

According to the allegations in the indictment, in 2010 or 2011, Livingston and Tipa offered Robert Porter, 50, who then was an active-duty colonel in the Army National Guard who held a high-level position at the NGB, a deal in which MPSC would pay Porter 1 percent of the value of all contracts he steered to MPSC. The indictment alleges that Porter was to receive the bribe payment after he retired from the NGB and began working for MPSC, and that the payment was to be concealed as an \u201cincentive fee\u201d or \u201cbonus\u201d payment in MPSC payroll records.<\/p>\n

According to the indictment, during 2011 and 2012, Porter allegedly steered at least three NGB marketing contracts to MPSC, which were worth a total of approximately $5.5 million. The indictment alleges that, during a July 2014 meeting of MPSC\u2019s board of directors, DeBlois confirmed that three contracts were awarded to MPSC while Porter was \u201cin uniform.\u201d Thereafter, Livingston, Tipa, Taylor and Jones allegedly unanimously voted to make the promised bribe payment to Porter. The indictment further alleges that, between July and September 2014, MPSC made three payments to Porter, each for over $10,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Additionally<\/a>, a National Guard active duty Sergeant First Class, Jason Rappoccio, was sentenced the other day to forty-two months in prison for taking bribes for steering government money to his friends;<\/p>\n

In connection with his guilty plea, Rappoccio admitted to accepting a $30,000 bribe from Timothy Bebus, a retired sergeant major of the Minnesota Army National Guard and owner of Mil-Team Consulting and Solutions LLC (Mil-Team). In exchange, Rappoccio agreed to steer a $3.6 million contract to Mil-Team by awarding the contract to a Small Business Administration (SBA) 8(a) certified company, chosen by Bebus, that Rappoccio understood would sub-contract a portion of the work to Mil-Team.<\/p>\n

Rappoccio admitted that the $30,000 bribe was structured to conceal the payment. Specifically, Bebus gave $6,000 in cash directly to Rappoccio, and the remaining $24,000 was paid in a cashier\u2019s check in the name of Rappoccio\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n

Rappoccio also admitted to accepting additional benefits in exchange for steering an additional $4 million contract to Mil-Team. In particular, Rappoccio solicited and received from Bebus airline tickets for two of Rappoccio\u2019s family members. He also received NFL tickets worth over $1,300 from another co-conspirator.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wonder how the four officers will fare in court as compared to the former sergeant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen sends us links to the Justice Department announcement that four high ranking military officers of … Guardsmen charged in contract bribery case<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[208],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-guard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}