Thread by @DawsonSField

Indictment unsealed today for the chief running a DOD contracting program for key national defense programs.

$500,000 to pay his girlfriend's salary for a no show job & travel so she could go with him on DOD's dime.#ButNothingsHappening HT @MuseScry
courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Everyone talks about sealed indictments, but no one pays attention to them when they are unsealed!
This one was sealed on 03/12/20 giving them 4 months of investigative time since the indictment.

I suspect that he was involved in other fraud but time will tell.

NCD handles negotiation & specifications for various contracts for all branches of the armed services. Bouchard started with them in 1998 as a contracting officer, became Deputy Chief in 2006 & Chief from Jan. 2016- April 2018.

Bouchard had Evolution Enterprises, Inc. hire his girfriend for a no show job as his assistant. They got paid more than $20M to provide contract management 'services' under Bouchard.

Her position was funded by convincing Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense (JPEO-CBD) he needed an assistant to more quickly handle their requested contracts.

Contracts for research, development, acquisition, fielding and life-cycle support of biological, chemical and nuclear defense equipment and medical countermeasures for all branches of the military...
cbrnecentral.com/profiles/name/…

Yes folks, a half a million dollars to pay his bartender/girlfriend for a no show job processing contracts for research on bioweapons & other topics...

But she only got about 4 years at $65k a year out of the deal, the contractor kept the rest for overhead...

But I guess that is easy when the boyfriend who set up the no call job was also signing off on the invoices!

65K a year is good pay just to hang out at the pool & Disney World instead of working!

But I suspect this is just small potatoes for what else may be going on. From 2013 NCD, with Bouchard as either Deputy or Chief has handled $500M in contracts for JPEO CBD. How much fraud & kickback could be hidden if they missed his no show assistant?

JPEO CDB is just one of Nattick Contracting Division's customers, they handle far more than just the $500M for that one agency. So it is possible that this scandal is far wider & a major piece of the DOD Acquisitions Swamp!

I did find a DOD OIG report from 2012 looking at some of their smaller no bid contracts. While the report only found 1 case where they did not bother to document why they awarded the contract, the documented ones could have been corrupt too.
media.defense.gov/2012/Apr/10/20…

So out of the 32 Sole-Source contracts, 21 had their paperwork in a row. 1 was awarded without justification, & 10 were awarded without compliance for policies over noncompetitive contracts.

So then someone promoted Bouchard to Deputy Chief in 2016 when he oversaw that mess?

In Fiscal Years 2009 & 2010 Natick Contract Division awarded over $724M in contracts with DOD money from the Army's Aberdeen center as part of U.S. Army Contracting Command. This is likely only one of their contracting streams...

NCD Contracting Officers were not doing proper research & compliance in awarding noncompetitive contracts.

Essentially they were hand picking the vendors & paying too much for the contract than if it had been bid out...