Business owner faces sentencing
By Staff Reports
Published in News on October 2, 2014 1:46 PM
A Goldsboro business owner who pleaded guilty in connection with an attempt to defraud the government on a military contract will spend more than a year in prison.
Chief U.S. District Court Judge James C. Deaver sentenced Hilda Parker, 57, Wednesday to 12 months and one day in prison, to be followed by three years supervised probation. Ms. Parker must also repay the government in full, immediately, Deaver ordered.
Ms. Parker had previously pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud in connection with the case.
According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Ms. Parker ran Parker Products, a company that filled orders for the Defense Logistics Agency.
Between April and December 2007, Parker Products was awarded 217 purchase orders totaling more than $346,000.
Of the 217 orders, the company filled all but 29. According to the press release, however, Ms. Parker took payment on and confirmed the 29 orders as though they had been filled.
Because of the fast-pay purchase system, DLA made payment on the verification rather than on actual receipt of the goods ordered.
Some of the items ordered through Ms. Parker Inc. were mission critical.
Betty J. Lavery, contracting officer for the Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, said that one of the undelivered purchase orders was identified an "emergency buy" -- a designation reserved for an acquisition so urgently needed that a delay would result in a "serious injury" to the government.
Specifically, Ms. Parker failed to deliver a repair/replacement part needed in a light armored vehicle operated by the U.S. Marine Corps and which was scheduled to be loaded aboard a ship leaving for Iraq.
Her failure to deliver the needed part by the delivery date, as well as her other delivery failures, resulted in the degradation of operational readiness for a number of military units, according to the court documents.
The Defense Criminal Investigation Service investigated the crimes. The U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted the case.