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Former Bears fullback Roland Harper pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraud for allowing his trucking company to be used by a white-owned firm to obtain contracts set aside for minority-owned businesses.

Harper, 55, of Algonquin, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of mail fraud and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. In return, prosecutors agreed to recommend he serve about 16 months in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 14.

Harper, who is African-American and was president of Rohar Construction, admitted he obtained contracts from Chicago Public Schools on behalf of Monahan Landscape Co., which got more than $1.5 million in payment.

The landscaping business, based in Arlington Heights, is headed by Aidan Monahan, 58, of Bensenville, who pleaded guilty last week to mail fraud. Monahan faces up to almost 5 years in prison when he is sentenced in September.

According to records, Rohar in 2003 was awarded a contract from the schools to oversee landscaping on some of its property, even though trucking, not landscaping, was Rohar’s specialty.

CPS spokesman Mike Vaughn said that when Rohar was awarded the contract, Rohar was believed to be “a general contractor with landscaping capabilities.”

“But when our Office of Business Diversity got involved, they questioned whether Rohar had landscaping capability,” Vaughn said. That office then notified the CPS’ inspector general’s office, which investigated and notified authorities.

Once Rohar was hired, Assistant U.S. Atty. Nancy Miller said, Monahan used his equipment for landscaping and controlled Rohar’s bank accounts.

Tags: aidan, algonquin, arlington heights, bensenville, business diversity, chicago public schools, cps, fullback, general contractor, inspector general, landscape, landscape co, Landscaping, mail fraud, mike vaughn, minority contractor, minority owned businesses, monahan, nancy miller, prosecutors, trucking company
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The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Inspector General Robert E. Van Etten Thursday announced the arraignment of a Long Island construction contractor on two felony and two misdemeanor charges stemming from the underpayment of wages to 13 laborers in excess of $25,000 on a public construction project.

Gerard Ippolito, president of Liberty Tree Service, Inc., and his corporation face numerous charges, including Offering a False Instrument for Filing in the First Degree the a Class E felony – and Failing to Pay Wages, a misdemeanor. The defendants entered not guilty pleas today in Queens County Criminal Court.

According to court papers, between October 18, 2004 and December 31, 2005, employees of Liberty Tree Services, Inc. worked on a Port Authority project involving landscaping for the John F. Kennedy International Airport Van Wyck Corridor Beautification Program, which followed the path of the AirTrain.  The contract was subject to the state’s prevailing wage law, which dictates the hourly rates that must be paid to employees on public work projects.

The weekly certified payroll records submitted by the defendants in the case showed the workers being paid the legal hourly prevailing wage rates of $51.11 per hour.  However, the contractors’ employees were actually paid hourly wages much less then the prescribed hourly rate.  The defendants are charged with filing false certified payroll records in an effort to conceal underpayments of $27,484.72 to 13 employees.

The case was investigated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Inspector General’s Office and then referred to the New York State Attorney General’s Office for prosecution.

Tags: airtrain, beautification program, construction contractor, construction project, guilty pleas, hourly wages, inspector general, island construction, island contractor, kennedy international airport, Landscaping, liberty tree, misdemeanor charges, new york state attorney general, payroll records, port authority of new york and new jersey, prevailing wage rates, public construction, queens county criminal court, Services, state attorney general, van etten, van wyck
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WASHINGTON The government’s terror watch list includes inaccurate and outdated information, increasing the risk that innocent people will be misidentified as terrorists while terrorists are overlooked, a government audit reported Monday.

The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine recommended that the FBI and other federal law-enforcement agencies improve their coordination of how terror suspects’ names are added to and removed from the list to avoid future problems.

Fine’s report helps explain why innocent travelers continue to be misidentified as terrorism suspects despite efforts by the federal government to improve its databases of more than 900,000 watch list names. Agents rely on the watch list when screening airline passengers and processing border crossers and visa applicants.

Although agents describe the watch list as invaluable in helping them detect terrorists, high-profile blunders have underscored its flaws, such as when agents repeatedly blocked Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., from boarding a plane because his name was similar to that of a terror suspect.

The Terrorist Screening Center oversees the watch list, while the National Counterterrorism Center and the FBI recommend or “nominate” names for it.

In Monday’s report, Fine said that federal agencies had set up procedures to catch errors, but didn’t always remove outdated records from the watch list. Compounding the problem, agents in the FBI’s 56 field offices often provided incomplete or inaccurate information when selecting or “nominating” names, he said.

Fine also chided other agencies within the Justice Department such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives for their “informal” sharing of watch list information.

“As a result, the potential exists for terrorism information to not be shared with the FBI and for terrorists to not be watch-listed,” Fine said.

To avoid further problems, he suggested that the FBI require that supervisors review nominations. Fine also recommended that the Justice Department take the lead in improving coordination of the process.

Officials with the FBI and the Terrorist Screening Center said Fine’s proposals either were already being adopted or would be within six months.

Tags: cement, inspector general, minis
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The public may yet learn what thousands of pilots told NASA about air safety. Congress moved Monday to analyze data from a project that the space agency cast aside and then withheld results in fear they could alarm the public and hurt airline profits.

The House Science and Technology Committee told the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, to use its statistical, aviation and survey experts to analyze NASA’s more than 24,000 telephone interviews with pilots.

Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., called the effort a high priority for Congress and the flying public.

“When the public pays for five years of government work designed to help us improve flying safety, I think the public deserves to get a report back on what was learned. NASA won’t do the work, so I am asking the GAO to bring back some answers to the committee that we can then share with the country,” Gordon said in a statement.

One goal will be to see how rates of events reported by the pilots compare to information collected in other ways by the Federal Aviation Administration.

NASA interviewed the pilots about dozens of safety incidents, including equipment failure and near collisions, that they encounter. The idea was to help identify precursors to accidents. The survey had an 80 percent response rate from the randomly contacted pilots.

NASA scuttled the survey and in 2006 closed the $11.3 million project, known as the National Aviation Operations Monitoring System. After the Associated Press reported last October that NASA was refusing to disclose results on grounds it might upset air travelers, Gordon’s committee demanded the raw data.

Under congressional pressure, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin released on New Year’s Eve a partial online version of the data, with thousands of pages scrambled to make sure no one could figure out how to identify the unnamed pilots. The pilots had been promised anonymity, but the redactions made that information “almost worthless for analysis,” Gordon said.

Griffin has belittled the quality of the survey while experts who worked on it and NASA union representatives have described it as state of the art. NASA’s inspector general is conducting an audit of the program’s management.

The FAA has questioned the project’s results showing more safety incidents than the FAA’s own data, saying it reflected pilots’ subjective opinions.

Tags: committee chairman, inspector general, minis
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