The government reported that Tower and Spectrum officials knew one another from working on previous projects together. Allegedly, Ahern agreed to have Spectrum use Tower’s status as a DBE to take credit for millions of dollars of work. But, since Tower did not perform a “commercially useful function” on the projects, Spectrum completed more of the directing, managing and supervising the DBE work.
Complaints state that by May 2010, Tower’s part of the deal had expanded more than 10 times than what was in the original deal. Spectrum workers were allegedly pretending to be Tower employees by wearing its company vests, using its security information and were even telling other laborers that they were Tower employees. A foreman allegedly informed a government investigator that Spectrum officials “ran the show.”
In addition to this, Ahern and Tower allegedly repeatedly sent out false statements and records to the main contractor, Skanska Koch Inc. (Brooklyn), NYC-DOT and the Metropolitan Transit Authority, misrepresenting that Tower had completed all the work alone and didn’t hire a subcontractor.
The government then claimed that Spectrum was paying kickbacks to an Ahern superintendent in the form of a $10,000 “commission payment” for commissioning the projects and arranged a free trip to Atlantic City in 2010 and 2012 for the vice president.
As a result of all of this, the defendants allegedly obtained millions of dollars in federal money to which they were not entitled.
Because of the investigative work completed by Douglas Shoemaker, regional Special Agent-in-Charge of the United States Deptartment of Transportation Office of the Inspector General; Margeret Garnett, the Commissioner of the NYC Deptartment of Investigation; Barry L. Kluger, Inspector General of the MTA-OIG; and all those involved with the investigation, a case was officially made in 2019.
Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, filed the charges against the three contractors, while assistant U.S. attorneys Monica Folch and Li Yu were put in charge of the case.
Settlement
As alleged in the amended complaint filed in Manhattan federal court in August 2019, Spectrum performed steel painting work on two federally funded projects to renovate the Brooklyn Bridge and Queens Plaza. Contracts for both projects required codefendant Ahern Painting Contractors Co. to hire DBEs to perform a percentage of the work and to adhere to the DBE regulations.
5025 Rabbit Farm Rd Loganville Ga 30052 GOOD LOOK PAINTERS LTD CO. is a Georgia Domestic Limited-Liability Company filed on May 4, 2022. The company’s filing status is listed as Active/Compliance and its File Number is 22101752. The Registered Agent on file for this company is Shayne Perrin and is located at 5285 Rabbit Farm Rd, Loganville, GA 30052.
