Bradken: Falsified Tests and the Cost of Finding the Castings

In the Bradken naval steel resolution, Bradken paid $10,896,924 to settle False Claims Act allegations that falsified tests concealed substandard steel in Navy parts. A laboratory employee found altered test cards and discrepancies in the company’s records. For someone who knows what a test actually showed and what the customer was told, that is the heart of this case: the paperwork said the steel met requirements that the steel had failed.

The Justice Department announced the civil payment on June 16, 2020. In its separate criminal deferred prosecution agreement, Bradken admitted the government’s account of the falsified tests and its misleading statements after discovering them. The civil case addressed the money paid for parts represented as meeting the Navy’s specifications.

What Bradken Supplied to Navy Shipbuilders

Bradken’s Tacoma, Washington foundry made high-yield steel castings that prime contractors used to fabricate submarine hulls. The Navy required strength and toughness standards intended to prevent failure in circumstances such as a collision. Those requirements concerned what the steel could withstand, an assurance a shipbuilder needed before the casting became part of a hull.

The civil agreement identifies the supply route: Bradken supplied parts directly or indirectly under Navy contracts held by General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries. In this shipbuilding supply chain, the foundry’s representation about its steel traveled farther than its own invoice.

The Tests and the Castings They Covered

Under its deferred prosecution agreement, Bradken admitted that the foundry produced castings that had failed laboratory tests and did not meet Navy standards. The Justice Department’s June 2020 account of the court filings described falsification reaching back 30 years. Bradken acquired the foundry in 2008.

The civil agreement addressed a narrower period. It described falsified results for at least 50 heats of high-yield steel between 2009 and 2017, intended for nuclear submarines. Its allegations about parts supplied under the shipbuilders’ contracts covered August 1, 2009, through May 31, 2017.

A 2022 paper in the International Journal of Management and Humanities draws a useful distinction in its discussion of hidden structural defects:

Bradken shows why that distinction matters to a buyer relying on a laboratory result. Altering the result conceals the failed test at the very point where testing is supposed to expose the problem.

How a False Test Reached the Navy’s Bill

The government alleged that Bradken invoiced shipbuilders for parts as though they met the military specifications when they did not. It alleged that this caused the shipbuilders to invoice the Navy for those parts. The civil agreement alleged that Bradken supplied the nonconforming parts without disclosing the substitution, causing false claims for government payment.

This is the connection between falsified testing and the bill. The government was paying for parts made from specified steel, and the alleged misrepresentation allowed different steel to move through that payment chain. We follow the casting from the lab record to the supplier’s representation and the shipbuilder’s charge because each tells a different part of the same transaction.

The foundry employee may recognize the altered result long before seeing a Navy invoice. The shipbuilder’s purchasing or quality staff may see the supplier’s assurance without seeing the original failure. Connecting those views is how we assess what the government paid for and what the people inside the business knew about the discrepancy.

An Employee Found the Alterations, Then the Story Changed

In May 2017, a lab employee discovered altered test cards and other discrepancies in Bradken’s records. Bradken initially disclosed the findings to the Navy, then made misleading statements suggesting the discrepancies did not result from fraud.

Under its deferred prosecution agreement, Bradken admitted that those misleading statements hindered the Navy’s investigation and its work to address the risks. We see a second failure here: after an employee exposed the false laboratory records, the company’s explanation made the Navy’s response harder. An altered card at a supplier had become a problem for the Navy’s equipment and its money.

The Cost of Finding Out What the Navy Had Bought

The Navy’s engineering response approached $14 million and consumed more than 50,000 engineering hours, according to the Justice Department’s February 2022 account of the director’s criminal case. The Justice Department also reported that measures to ensure the submarines’ safe operation would increase maintenance and costs.

The Navy spent more finding out what it had bought than Bradken paid to settle. The Navy had to spend heavily to assess equipment it had already bought on the strength of false results. Changing a laboratory record had shifted the work of establishing what the steel could withstand onto the customer, after delivery.

The civil agreement designated $5,448,462 of Bradken’s payment as restitution within the settlement. It also barred Bradken from charging the government, directly or indirectly, for the settlement and specified investigation, defense and corrective-action costs.

The Metallurgy Director’s Admitted Falsification

In a 2021 guilty plea, the former director of metallurgy admitted falsifying steel testing used for Navy submarine castings. The government’s February 2022 account of that criminal case described more than 240 affected productions. In the earlier corporate agreement, Bradken admitted that the director had changed results to hide failed tests.

The person responsible for the metallurgical results was changing what the customer saw. That puts the original laboratory records at the center of the story: they could show the failure that the altered result concealed.

What Proof Do You Need as a Whistleblower?

For allegations of falsified testing, the useful proof connects the required specification, the original result, the altered result and the affected product to the representation supporting government payment. Bradken supplies a concrete example: altered test cards, identified steel productions, parts supplied under shipbuilding contracts and invoices treating those parts as compliant. We work with you to connect the evidence you know from inside the business to that payment path.

Another foundry case shows how a passing result can hide the failed ones. In the whistleblower’s complaint against Wellman Dynamics, an employee alleged that test bars were repeatedly pulled until one passed and the lot could ship. The complaint then described what happened to the failures:

The alleged manipulation reached the measuring system itself. The complaint said a lab manager lowered the recorded diameter of a test bar after testing, causing the machine to recalculate failed properties as passing. The casting could then ship on the changed result. That is the value of an insider’s knowledge of the test and the record it produced: a clean final report can conceal the decisions that made it look clean. A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

You Know What the Test Really Showed

If a result changed between the test bench and the customer’s paperwork, tell our whistleblower experts what you saw. We build the case around the technical facts you understand, connect them to the government payment and bring in defense fraud whistleblower lawyers suited to that evidence. We stay beside you as your knowledge of the casting, the test and the decision to ship becomes a case for recovery.