Asphalt Specialists: Bids Built to Lose

In the Asphalt Specialists bid rigging case, the Michigan paving company pleaded guilty to agreements that used deliberately losing bids to make predetermined contract awards look competitive. The customer saw rival offers. Behind those offers, the bidders had already chosen who would get the work. An estimator who knows why a price was set to lose may know more about that decision than the customer ever saw.

The Justice Department’s account of the Pontiac-based company’s criminal case describes separate agreements with Al’s Asphalt Paving Company Inc. and F. Allied Construction Company Inc.

How Does Bid Rigging Work and Why Is It Illegal?

Bid rigging is illegal because competitors agree to replace independent bids with an arranged outcome. In Asphalt Specialists’ criminal case, the companies coordinated their prices so that the agreed loser submitted an intentionally uncompetitive bid. The customer could compare the offers without knowing that the companies had arranged the result.

The losing bid had a job to do. It helped the chosen winner look like the better offer. A buyer evaluating price was being shown a comparison the suppliers had constructed together.

For someone inside a paving business, the revealing instruction may concern the job the company is supposed to lose. We examine how that price was chosen, who supplied the information behind it and whether the submitted offer followed a competitor’s instructions. The connection between a price discussion and an actual bid is what turns an account of coordination into something a customer’s purchasing records can help explain.

The Agreements With Al’s Asphalt and Allied

Asphalt Specialists’ guilty plea covered overlapping relationships with different competitors. According to the Justice Department’s account of the court documents, the agreement with Al’s Asphalt ran from March 2013 through November 2018.

The separate agreement with F. Allied Construction ran from July 2017 through May 2021. The Allied arrangement began while the Al’s Asphalt arrangement was still running, and continued after it ended.

That distinction matters when we review an insider’s account. A message about Allied belongs with the bids and people involved in that relationship. A direction involving Al’s Asphalt belongs with its own work. Keeping the customer, competitor and bid date together lets us follow the agreement the employee actually saw.

The Former President’s Role in the Allied Agreement

Asphalt Specialists’ former president admitted participating in the Allied bid-rigging agreement. In its account of his guilty plea, the Justice Department reported that he pleaded guilty to conspiring with Allied and employees at both companies to rig bids in each other’s favor. His participation covered the same period as the company’s Allied agreement. The same criminal-case account reports guilty pleas by another former Asphalt Specialists executive and by Allied and two of its executives for participating in that agreement.

The admission places a company president inside the arrangement. For an employee receiving bidding directions, the useful detail is who made the decision and how it reached the submitted price. An instruction from management and the estimate that changed after it can tell different parts of the same story.

How Is Bid Rigging Detected?

Asphalt estimators can compare an instruction to lose with the job costs behind the submitted price; see the road-bidding example.

A submitted price can be read against the estimate behind it, the revisions made before submission and any exchange with another bidder. We look for what drove the change. If an insider says the price was changed to protect a rival’s bid, those records can connect the direction to the offer the customer received.

Applied to a paving inquiry, its lesson is to examine how offers were built as well as where they finished. An insider may be able to explain a change that a table of final prices leaves invisible.

Postal Service Investigators and Paving Contracts

The Department of Transportation and U.S. Postal Service inspectors general investigated the Asphalt Specialists case, which the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division prosecuted. Their involvement makes the customer and payment behind each paving contract worth understanding.

For a potential whistleblower case, we trace the bid to the contract, the buyer and the payment. Where government money paid for the work, the question includes what the contractor represented when obtaining that money. That is how we examine a possible False Claims Act case alongside evidence of coordinated bidding.

We also assess the Antitrust Division and Postal Service’s reward agreement, effective May 7, 2025, with the insider and the documents behind the work.

Military Fuel Bid Rigging: When the Wrong Bidder Wins

The Hanjin military-fuel account describes allocated contract items protected by high or missing bids, a government-procurement comparison separate from the roadwork case.

The Hyundai Oilbank example shows why later supplier work can expose an allocation that the award notice alone does not reveal.

In that alleged arrangement, a surprise winner was a mistake to be corrected. The award and the later supply agreement belonged in the same account of how the bidders divided the business.

The fuel matters also produced False Claims Act settlements. Hanjin’s filed settlement identifies a whistleblower’s qui tam case. For a paving insider, the parallel directs attention to the whole transaction: the offer, the award, the work and the government payment. Those connections are what we examine when deciding how evidence of a rigged bid can support a civil whistleblower case.

What Is the Role of Whistleblowers in Bid Rigging Cases?

A whistleblower can explain who chose the winner.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers. We assess the government-payment evidence and the potential reward program with you. If your own role in preparing or approving bids is part of the story, that belongs in the conversation with our whistleblower experts and antitrust whistleblower lawyers.

You Know Why the Bid Changed

Explain each asphalt agreement to our whistleblower experts with its own customer, rival and bid date so the two arrangements stay distinct.