Underqualified Labor on Defense Contracts: Resumes, Labor Categories, and Billed Rates

Defense contractor labor category fraud occurs when a contractor knowingly bills the government for qualifications its workers do not have. The contract promises a particular level of experience, training or tested ability, and the company charges for that level. The resume describes one level of experience; the invoice charges for another. A staffing specialist or program manager may know exactly where those stories part. The employees lacked the qualifications represented on the bill in INovex Information Systems: Employees Without Required Qualifications.

What the Labor Category Requires

The contract’s qualification requirements connect the person doing the work to the category being billed. We follow what the task order promised, the worker’s credentials and the category on the bill. A required degree, a minimum level of experience and a proficiency test each call for different evidence.

If an Army labor category is billed for an employee who lacks a required degree, we start with the requirement for that category and the credentials the contractor submitted. Any approval, substitution or contract change belongs beside that comparison. Required security clearances also connect the assigned worker to the contract: was that person authorized to do the billed work?

From a Resume to a Government Payment

A labor-category case connects a staffing representation to a request for government money. The documents have different jobs, and the comparison becomes useful when the same worker, contract and billing period run through them.

False hours concern whether the billed work happened. Charging work to the wrong contract concerns which customer owed for it. Underqualified labor concerns whether the person met the requirements attached to the billed category.

The Cases Put the Qualification on the Bill

The qualification can appear in a resume, a specialized staffing requirement or a test result. These cases show how each can become part of a government bill, and where an insider may see the contradiction.

Allegations of Falsified Resumes for Army Labor Categories

Computer Sciences Corporation agreed to a $1.1 million settlement announced in April 2014 over allegations involving falsified resumes on an Army information-technology task order. The Justice Department alleged that the resumes qualified personnel for higher-paid labor categories. That puts the staffing document directly beside the price charged for the worker.

DRS Technical Services agreed to a $13.7 million settlement in October 2014 over alleged qualification-based overbilling on Army and Coast Guard contracts. The Army contracts covered services and supplies in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the Coast Guard work involved aircraft maintenance. The government alleged that DRS billed for personnel whose qualifications did not meet the categories charged, increasing both the amount claimed and the amount paid.

Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems agreed to a $27.5 million settlement announced in December 2014. The Justice Department alleged that Army task orders supporting Iraq and Afghanistan received underqualified employees billed at rates for more qualified staff. We see the same bargain turned upside down: taxpayers paid the qualified-worker rate for people the government alleged were underqualified.

NSA Contractor Specialized Qualifications in Dispute

In the iNovex Information Systems case, the Justice Department alleged that employees did not meet specialized qualifications required for NSA work. A Defense Department inspector general report describes a separate CACI Technologies settlement over allegations that it supplied underqualified employees to the NSA. CACI agreed to pay approximately $1.5 million in July 2018 to resolve breach-of-contract allegations.

Military Linguist Language Tests Allegedly Not Performed

When a military linguist’s language test is never performed, the government can pay for proficiency the contractor never checked. Worldwide Language Resources and its president agreed to a $5 million civil settlement announced in January 2013 covering allegations of untested linguists and services not provided. The contracts required linguists to take proficiency tests and achieve specified scores before they were acceptable for the work.

The government alleged that Worldwide supplied untested linguists to overseas combat areas and other military settings while continuing to invoice and certify compliance with the testing requirements. Former employees brought whistleblower allegations that formed part of the investigation. For the person handling staffing or testing, the useful contradiction is between the required test, the actual testing record and the compliance statement supporting the bill.

Triple Canopy Allegations of False Guard Marksmanship Scorecards

Triple Canopy agreed to a $2.6 million civil settlement announced in October 2017 over allegations that it billed for unqualified security guards in Iraq. Its contract covered security services at Al Asad Airbase.

The government alleged that the company concealed guards’ inability to satisfy the testing requirement by creating false scorecards for government review. A former employee started the whistleblower case, which the government joined. The Army designed the tests to establish whether guards could fire their assigned weapons safely and accurately. A passing scorecard carried a promise about the service the government was paying for.

Tetra Tech and the Resume That Changed

A whistleblowers’ complaint concerning Tetra Tech EC and subcontractor New World Environmental alleges a particularly revealing change in a worker’s resume. The complaint says the Navy’s Hunters Point cleanup required radiological control technicians with specified training and experience. It alleges that a revised resume dropped the worker’s earlier claims of nuclear-remediation experience:

The complaint alleges that New World Environmental nevertheless billed Tetra Tech at the senior radiation-technician rate while knowing the worker lacked the required qualifications. It also alleges that Tetra Tech knew of the qualification problem and billed the Navy. In that account, the nuclear experience disappeared from the resume while the senior rate survived on the bill. The complaint describes warnings inside the staffing business before the revised resume arrived. We would want to know who saw those warnings and who kept approving that rate.

What a Time-and-Materials Rate Pays For

A time-and-materials contract pays for qualifying labor hours at fixed category rates. Under the federal acquisition rule for that contract type, the hourly rate includes wages, overhead, general and administrative expenses, and profit. The indirect-cost portion runs through expenses, cost pools and allocations. The DRS allegations show why the worker’s qualifications also matter to payment: the government alleged that DRS billed for work people performed, but charged categories they did not qualify for.

What Evidence Is Needed to Prove Fraud?

The useful evidence connects the qualification requirement, the worker’s actual credentials, the billed category and the contractor’s knowledge of the mismatch. A proposal or staffing employee may hold the resume and the category assignment. A technical supervisor may know that the claimed experience does not match the work history, or that the required test never occurred. Billing personnel may see the rate that reached the invoice.

A changed resume and an internal warning can explain more than either document alone. In the Tetra Tech complaint, the alleged warnings, revised employment history and continued senior-rate billing connect the qualification issue to decisions inside the business. We work through those connections with you when assessing a defense contractor whistleblower claim. A qui tam case under the False Claims Act can pay a whistleblower 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

What the Qualification Protects

A required qualification describes part of the service the government bought. In its 2022 report, Hidden Costs: US Private Military and Security Companies and the Risks of Corruption and Conflict, Transparency International Defence and Security describes contractors providing weapons maintenance, armed security, training and intelligence services. It also identifies undertraining and understaffing in government oversight as obstacles to assessing corruption risks and holding contractors accountable.

The linguist and guard cases put that concern into terms a staffing insider can recognize. The government paid for a tested ability to interpret language or use a weapon safely, while the allegations concerned missing tests or false results. The person who checked the qualification can connect the testing record to the promise on the invoice.

You Know Who Filled the Position

If you know the resume, test result or staffing substitution behind an inflated labor-category bill, speak with our whistleblower experts about what the government paid for. We build the case with you around the promised qualifications, the people supplied and the decisions that kept the billing going. We bring in defense contractor fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand labor-category claims and remain your partners throughout the case.