Lend Lease and Cindell: Patriots Park Payroll Certifications

The Lend Lease and Cindell settlement was a combined $400,000 agreement to resolve false certified payroll allegations at Patriots Park in Reston, Virginia. The government alleged that lower-tier drywall subcontractors underpaid workers while weekly payroll certifications represented compliance. For someone who knows what a construction crew actually earned, that gap between the paycheck and the certification is the heart of the case.

Lend Lease Construction, locally based in Rockville, Maryland, and Cindell Construction Company, based in Frederick, Maryland, agreed to the payment in a civil case the Justice Department announced on March 11, 2015. The work involved renovating government-leased property to meet General Services Administration and Defense Department security requirements. The government alleged that employers below Cindell underpaid the crew while Lend Lease and Cindell submitted false claims for government money.

Who Did What at Patriots Park

The property owner hired Lend Lease to manage construction, and Lend Lease subcontracted drywall installation to Cindell. Cindell then hired lower-tier subcontractors. Those lower-tier employers were the businesses the government alleged had underpaid workers and failed to compensate overtime properly. The subcontract chain can put another employer between the company responsible for a trade and the workers receiving the pay.

The Justice Department alleged that Lend Lease and Cindell submitted false claims after the lower-tier underpayments, despite weekly payroll certifications of compliance. We follow both parts of that allegation: who paid the wages and what the companies represented to the government. An insider’s knowledge of the employer below the drywall subcontract can explain something a construction-management agreement alone cannot show.

The Wage Promise Behind the Security Work

The Patriots Park lease made the renovation subject to the Davis-Bacon Act and the Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act. The Justice Department said the required prevailing wage depended on the class of work the laborers and mechanics performed. For a payroll employee, the question connects the work done, the classification reported and the wage paid.

The announcement also describes overtime at time and a half the prevailing wage rate for hours worked over 40 in a week. The government alleged both underpayment and improper overtime compensation.

These requirements explain why false certified payroll on defense construction reaches beyond an employer’s wage records. At Patriots Park, the government alleged that compliance certifications accompanied underpayment and false claims for government funds. We see the contradiction plainly: a project undertaken to satisfy government security requirements allegedly carried payroll assurances that the workers’ pay could not support. In that alleged arrangement, the crew bore the wage shortfall while the government received the assurance of compliance.

A Whistleblower Case Started the Investigation

A whistleblower filed the qui tam lawsuit that initiated the Patriots Park investigation. The Justice Department credited the resolution to a coordinated effort by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Labor Department Office of Inspector General and the General Services Administration Office of Inspector General.

The companies agreed to settle the false-claims allegations together, and the announcement provided for the whistleblower to receive a share of the settlement. A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

What Evidence Is Needed to Prove Fraud?

For an allegation like Patriots Park’s, we work with the insider to connect the required wages, actual pay, weekly compliance certification and claim for government money. Your knowledge of the project gives those documents their context. The starting point may be a wage discrepancy at a lower-tier employer, even when the government’s claim concerns companies farther up the construction chain.

We examine which work a worker performed, which wage requirement applied, how the employer treated overtime and what the weekly certification said about compliance. Those comparisons follow the alleged wage and overtime failures at Patriots Park. They connect a payroll employee’s knowledge of the crew’s pay to what the government was told.

Different jobs provide different views of that connection. A payroll preparer may understand the hours and payments, a subcontract manager may know which business supplied the crew, and a project accountant may understand the claim for payment. We bring those views together to assess the evidence behind a defense contractor fraud case, including who knew the certification did not match the pay.

The Same Payroll Problem on Other Construction Projects

A court found Circle C Construction liable for false Davis-Bacon payroll certifications involving its electrical subcontractor’s work at Fort Campbell. The Defense Department inspector general’s 2018 report to Congress described allegations that Ranco Construction supplied false wage information and falsified payroll records to conceal underpayment. At Patriots Park, the alleged gap between actual pay and certified compliance arose at lower-tier subcontractors and reached the government through false claims by Lend Lease and Cindell.

You Know the Pay Behind the Certification

If you handled payroll, drywall subcontracts or project accounts and saw wages that contradict the weekly certification, speak to one of our Whistleblower Experts about the pay behind the certification. We connect your knowledge of the crew’s pay to the government claim and bring in defense construction whistleblower lawyers who understand prevailing-wage and overtime cases. We stay with you as partners from the first call and work to build your strongest prevailing-wage whistleblower case.