Federal Disabled-Veterans Program
Boston - A Chelmsford man was charged today in federal court with defrauding the federal government with a scheme to subvert a program designed to provide business opportunities for service-disabled veteran owners of small construction companies.
David E. Gorski, 47, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and four counts of wire fraud.
Since 1999, the Small Business Act has mandated a government-wide goal of annually awarding at least three-percent of the total value of all federal contracts to service disabled veteran owners of small businesses. In 2004, an Executive Order was issued requiring all federal agencies to publish a strategy to implement this goal and to utilize the restricted competition provisions of the Small Business Act in order to provide service-disabled veteran owned businesses opportunities to increase their involvement in federal contracting.
The indictment alleges that from late 2005 through November 2010, Gorski, a non-veteran, fraudulently represented that a company he established, Legion Construction, Inc., was a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) in order to qualify for and obtain government contracts from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the General Services Administration, the Army and the Navy. The Indictment further alleges that Gorski sent invoices via fax and email to the Department of Veteran Affairs in Austin, Texas, billing the government hundreds of thousands of dollars for the work performed by Legion.
The indictment details a scheme in which Gorski utilized disabled veterans to serve nominally as President and majority owners of Legion, when Gorski in fact actually founded and operated Legion from its inception in 2006. The indictment also describes how Gorski sought to circumvent the federal regulation that required a service-disabled veteran owner to be the highest paid officer in the company. A series of emails between Gorski and Legion’s accountant revealed the details of an agreement between Gorski and the nominal veteran President of Legion providing for Gorski to receive $2.5 million after taxes from Legion, as well as additional, hidden compensation above what the veteran company president would receive.
