The Figurehead: $240 Million in Contracts Meant for Disabled Veterans

Conspirators installed a service-disabled veteran as a figurehead owner while they ran the company and took $240M in contracts set aside for disabled-veteran-owned businesses. The veteran was the costume.

Court record — not allegation. The defendant in this case, Michael Angelo Padron, with Michael Wibracht and Ruben Villarreal, was convicted. The facts below are drawn from the official account of the case, linked at the bottom of this page.
$240M+Set-aside contracts secured by the fraud
Outcome27 months in prison; $1.75M fine (Padron)
ForumU.S. District Court, Western District of Texas; DOJ Office of Public Affairs

Padron conspired with others to install Ruben Villarreal, a service-disabled veteran, as the ostensible owner of a general construction company held out as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB).

In reality, Padron and his business partners exercised the disqualifying financial and operational control. They concealed that control to win contracts set aside for service-disabled veteran-owned and other small businesses — for the benefit of their larger, non-qualifying companies.

A jury convicted Padron in June 2022 after a six-day trial. The case was investigated by SBA-OIG, Army CID, VA-OIG, DCIS and GSA-OIG and prosecuted with the Antitrust Division’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force.

"secure over $240 million in government contracts that were set aside for SDVOSBs"
— U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs
The system these cases ran through is run by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins. The accountability record — the letters, the filings, the unanswered questions — is kept at DearDougCollins.com. For the veterans on the other side of the VA's machinery — including the exposure-classification fight — the hub is BrownWaterVet.com.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs. Case file in the VA Fraud case files — part of the VA Fraud record. Cases are published as the courts decided them; amounts are stated as the Justice Department states them (billed, stolen, or ordered in restitution, as labeled).

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