The former owner of a local construction company and a Kansas City veteran were indicted by a federal grand jury Friday, Jan. 13, 2017 for their roles in a “rent-a-vet” scheme to fraudulently obtain more than $13.8 million in federal contracts.
Jeffrey K. Wilson, 51, of the Village of Loch Lloyd in Belton, MO Paul R. Salavitch, 56, of Kansas City and Patriot Company, Inc., a business located in Kansas City were charged in an eight-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Kansas City.
The indictment alleges that Wilson, Salavitch and the Patriot Company participated in a conspiracy to defraud the government by falsely representing Patriot Company as a veteran-owned or service-disabled veteran-owned small business in order to fraudulently obtain approximately $13.8 million in federal government construction contracts for work in nine states.
According to the indictment, Patriot Company was a pass-through or front company for a Greenwood, MO construction company owned by Wilson during the scheme. Conspirators allegedly used Salavitch’s veteran and service-disabled veteran status in a “rent-a-vet” scheme to bid on at least 20 government contracts and receive approximately $13.8 million to which Patriot Company would not have otherwise been entitled to receive because those contracts were set-aside exclusively for legitimate veteran-owned or service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. As a result of the fraud scheme, legitimate veteran owned and run businesses were not awarded these contracts.
