kid sinister posted:

Dublin Airport, ladies and gentlemen.

Cat Hatter posted:

Is Grover building a new house?

PurpleXVI posted:

So, fun fact.

In our goods receiving section, one of the back walls is like this, just a thin layer of plaster board... on the other side of which are all the relays and electrical cabinets for the entire warehouse. Every couple of years they have to rebuild half the wall because forklifts keep slamming holes in it, and it's really just a matter of time before some jackass smashes the forks right through the cabinets on the other side.

HolHorsejob posted:

Big "pickup/dropoff loop in front of the Marriott" energy here

e: loving the completely paved front yard as well

D34THROW posted:

At the old office of one of the branches I do work for, the warehouse "supervisor" put a 3" aluminum post through the warehouse wall into the office with a forklift. I could stick my head through the hole.

Blue Moonlight posted:

I hate that I look at this and the thing that makes me most angry is that the columns aren’t centered.

Scarodactyl posted:

Is your head really long and thin, perchance?

kid sinister posted:

Ornamental Dingbat posted:

It keeps the grass stains off of the yard couch.

IncredibleIgloo posted:

It took me a long time to realize that was not a weirdly photoshopped floor and is a set of stairs.

kid sinister posted:

Powerful Two-Hander posted:

https://twitter.com/CheapoCrappy/st...ingawful.com%2F

kid sinister posted:

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

That staircase looks like something out of a VA clinic.

quote:

A Denver Post review of spending projects since 2018 found piecemeal additions of multi-million-dollar projects that were initially canceled to keep the price tag down — a new $20 million PTSD building among them. Millions more was spent on a litany of malfunctioning, poorly installed, or missing items that were muffed from the start.

Failed sewers, broiling elevators, downspouts spewing hazardous liquid, improper fire doors, and sidewalks without handicap-accessible curbing were a handful of the items that needed to be fixed or reworked, according to records and interviews.

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

As long as it's not a southern VA, it's generally fine. They have real problems with people not properly sanitizing equipment/tools and every couple years you'll hear about a bunch of vets from Georgia or Tennessee that were exposed to HIV or hepatitis.

The thing is, that poo poo happens in private hospitals, but you never hear about it because they're not beholden to the public like the VA.

Anyhow, thread related, the Denver/Aurora VA is alright, given they spent $2 billion on it (half was grift). Second most expensive hospital in the world.

https://www.denverpost.com/2021/08/27/va-hospital-aurora-building-budget-expenses/

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

VA is separate from DoD though, and that's honestly the most corrupt government entity we have by far. We give the MIC more through the defense budget than the VA gets altogether.

Gov whistleblowers always wind up suppressed or fired as it stands, the VA just has a whole heap of people who play office politics too loving hard. My aunt is an NP at a VA, sees it every day.

My current PCP (never served) is pretty nice and will order anything her patients need, but my last psychiatrist was an anti-vax veteran with a big ego in play and I did not get along with him. The previous was a nice older woman with lots of turquoise in her office, but I moved away from her area. Honestly, you can find worse health care on the civilian side, but you'll never know because the only people to hear about the fuckups are the shareholders.

CarForumPoster posted:

KirbyKhan posted:

Don't! Historically speaking America has been EXTREMELY unkind to whistleblowers

US government on internal USG whistleblowers, yes. Whistleblowers on USG CONTRACTORS no. Some parts of the government are better about this than others though. gently caress the VA in particular.

Shaggar posted:

and by compensation you mean being blacklisted from your industry in the best case and in the more likely case jailed for violating state secrets.

Yeah, nah all of this is wrong.

The False Claims Act 101

Qui Tam lawsuits brought under the False Claims Act (FCA) allow a whistleblower (called a "Relator") to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the US government (the plaintiff). If the government recovers money in the suit the relator is entitled to somewhere between 10-33% though must often its 15% if the government intervenes in the case (takes over) and 20-25% if they decline to intervene (the relator's lawyers fight the case). The lawyers who do these do them on contingency, getting attorneys fees + 40-60%, sometimes more if the case is an intense fight, of the Relator's share. Violatiors of the FCA face triple damages + 5K minimum for each submitted false claims at trial, though the most often outcome is a settlement for double damages. E.g. $1M of overpayments = $2M settlement to the government.

The FCA is a fraud statute. Fraud stems from the payment so a relator should able to identify payments that would not have been made, had the conduct been known. Fraud is an intentional act, the fraudster should either know or be negligent in not knowing that they're getting payments they shouldn't.

For example: The govt contractor attested that it would pay minimum wage and not use slave labor for its India-based IT employees, but the Relator knows that Anil Gupta was not being paid minimum wage. The Relator also knows the American IT contract was aware of this but did not disclose it even though the USG's contract required them to pay minimum wage and report violations of the contract. Because of this, all payments made under this contract after the date the company became aware of the violation, or within the 10 year statue of limitations, are due back to the government.

Example 2: A hospital that bills medicare/medicaid had a data breach due to security controls that were not implemented properly. The IT guys reported to the management that the security controls didn't meet the requirements of medicare/medicaid but were ignored. The hospital attested in their contract they met the requirements. Because they did not fix the issues and enter into the process for determining whether they'd have to refund the governments money, they may have liability under the FCA for all payments made under that contract.

RE: Retaliation
If you whistleblow on your current employer and they retaliate, good. Lawyers will gladly rep you on contingency. These can settle much faster than qui tam cases.

RE: Secrets
You usually don't need to share classified information to describe a fraud, though if you're working on an unacknowledged S//SAP or TS/SCI project, there may be issues there.

PM me
If you are aware of a company that gets government payments and is knowingly violating the provisions of their contract, PM me. I've been part of several FCA investigations and know many lawyers in this field.

BonerGhost posted:

VA defrauds Medicare/Medicaid, DoD defrauds everybody else. You'll never hear about the poo poo going on where I live right now because 1. Half the DoD doesn't seem to understand the office exists 2. The particulars are about programs that I can't even talk about unless I find public reporting on their existence.

There's one program here that has its expenses prepaid. I'm not privy to how much of it is US funded and how much is from a foreign ally's coffers, but let's say it's a mix. That program doesn't actually operate, so that its funds can become the slush fund for a whole other program. It's a lot of millions of dollars just for that one program, and who knows which other ones are doing the same tricks. The rest of what I know about is pretty pedestrian stuff, just an entire shop of contractors putting in for 20 hours of overtime they didn't work every single week for the last several years at least, a prostitution ring, and guys using government paid vehicles (and fuel) to do Uber, all of it with the knowledge of the second in command of the installation.

Crappy construction: the way the US government operates

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

Didn't expect that wall of text but thank you for giving me a schooling. In relation to Druyun, wasn't there something similar with the officer who decided the uniform contract around the same time, the army ACUs? I vaguely remember hearing the general who chose the pattern took a job from the winning contractor he chose after retiring.

Apologies for derailing but gov fraud is fascinating in a way.

`Nemesis posted:

`Nemesis posted:

CarForumPoster posted:

You're right! Many people won't know what you know. If you know of unethical poo poo happening, report it! You'll get a new job. If you report some illegal poo poo, I will personally help you find a new job and a good, works-on-contingency plaintiffs attorney. (See my recent posts in the BFC resume thread for my qualifications.)

Some thoughts on the facts you posted:
-I am not an expert in how the VA is funded but I believe it is separate of medicare and medicaid, regardless see my previously posted link for an example of a VA fraud having nothing to do with medicare or medicaid.
-If you work inside the USG, that could complicate things but talk to an attorney specializing in qui tam suits before reporting. I mention a few firms below. They might tell you that you have to report internally first, or that you need a new job first but this can vary a lot.
-If you're talking about an unacknowledged program where you can't describe the fraud without revealing something above U//FOUO that's may be an issue but attorney-client privilege may protect you such that you can get a consultation with an FCA expert. If you want, PM me and we can chat in vague details and I can look into plaintiffs attorneys who have handled similar matters.

Here are some generic firms in the FCA arena:
Philips and Cohen are the big boys, with settlements against Pfizer over $2B.
The Employment Law Group hosts the Fed Bar Association's FCA panel for the past 2 or 3 years.
I have worked with Bracker and Marcus out of Atlanta and highly recommend them. Medicare/Medicaid is almost synonymous with qui tam, you'll want a firm experienced in handling non stark/AKS/medicare issues. They've successfully recolved some gov't contractor issues.

The revolving door is a real issue, and there is a 2 year requirement regarding it. However that law is sometimes skirted by the newly retired person acting as a consultant for a few years before getting a job. Those consulting relationships have been found improper at times, but the revolving door is still a thing to this day. I was once an engineer for two of the top 5 govt contractors and we definitely hired people at the director level out of the PMO/PMA to do business development, which kinda rubbed me wrong. I'm not familiar with that one explicitly though.

Ill say the thing the DoD has going for it to prevent fraud is the SBA and GSA acting as separate entities with separate laws. This prevents a lot of day to day fraud by the little guys because if a contractor is doing an 8(a) set-aside fraud for some government IT poo poo, the GSA has 400 other 8(a) contractors half of them selling the exact same thing. They don't give two fucks about lighting up a contractor over that poo poo and they have many times. Those cases get intervened far more often than your medicare kickback (Stark/AKS) cases. (Also they're factually much simpler, proving fraud is hard if someone isn't stupid enough to write down the details of the fraud...and if they are you have trouble proving intent aka "scienter")

Zil posted:

But why?

Leviathan Song posted:

In my experience, SBA set asides are a massive source of fraud. Most of the official small business are just subsidiaries of some massive conglomerate. We bid one small business set aside contract where all three companies that entered a bid were Honeywell subsidiaries obviously colluding on price. I don't know about GSA but SBA is a loving joke.

Sentient Data posted:

I like the reinforcement on the top steps, those will handle plenty of weight

StormDrain posted:

Procedurally generated stairs.

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

As long as it's not a southern VA, it's generally fine. They have real problems with people not properly sanitizing equipment/tools and every couple years you'll hear about a bunch of vets from Georgia or Tennessee that were exposed to HIV or hepatitis.

The thing is, that poo poo happens in private hospitals, but you never hear about it because they're not beholden to the public like the VA.

Anyhow, thread related, the Denver/Aurora VA is alright, given they spent $2 billion on it (half was grift). Second most expensive hospital in the world.

https://www.denverpost.com/2021/08/27/va-hospital-aurora-building-budget-expenses/

StormDrain posted:

Procedurally generated stairs.

deoju posted:

https://twitter.com/UniqueBuilding5/status/1510236307724779526

`Nemesis posted: