A settlement has been reached in a whistleblower class action lawsuit brought against Science Applications International Inc. (SAIC); its subcontractor, Applied Enterprise Solutions LLC (AES); AES CEO Dale Galloway; and former government employees Stephen Adamec and Robert Knesel. They are accused of submitting or causing the submission of false claims and conspired to submit such claims under a contract with the General Services Administration (GSA).
According to the settlement details, SAIC will pay $20,400,000 and AES and Dale Galloway will pay $2,166,000. Adamec and Knesel are paying $110,000. The whistleblower will receive a $560,000 share of the recovery and was previously agreed to during the previous settlement of $2,000,000 with Lockheed Martin.
The contract in questions was to provide support services for the National Center for Critical Information Processing and Storage (NCCIPS) at the NAVO MSRC at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Miss. GSA awarded the NCCIPS task order in April 2004 to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which teamed with Lockheed Martin and Applied Enterprise Solutions (AES) to perform under the task order. SAIC was paid a total of $115 million under the contract, of which Lockheed Martin was paid $2 million according to the terms of its subcontract with SAIC.
The case, filed in May 2009, alleged that prior to the issuance, and once the NCCIPS solicitation had been publicized, that then government employees, Stephen Adamec and Robert Knesel, conspired with Lockheed Martin, Galloway, SAIC and AES to ensure that SAIC and its teaming partners were awarded the task order by (a) sharing non public, advance procurement information with the SAIC team that was not provided to other potential bidders; (b) sharing information about the solicitation with the SAIC team before providing that information to other bidders; and choosing a type of contract and putting language in the solicitation in order to bias the selection process to favor the SAIC team.
