Franconia Real Estate Services: Alleged Government Relocation Charges for Services Not Provided

Franconia Real Estate Services agreed to pay $509,807 to resolve allegations of government relocation charges for services not provided and overbilling through inapplicable tariff rates, the Department of Justice announced. For someone who knows the moves and the bills, those allegations raise different questions. Was the management service performed? Did the rate belong on that move?

The Virginia-based company operated as RE/MAX Allegiance Relocation Services. The settlement, announced on July 8, 2014, concerned contracts to transport federal employees’ personal property when they changed duty stations.

What Franconia’s Relocation Business Did for the Government

Franconia billed federal agencies for moving employees’ personal property when they changed duty stations. Its move-management business covered moves within the United States and between the United States and Canada. That is the business behind this government contractor overbilling case: the services charged to an agency and the rate used to price a move.

The federal employee making a move and the office paying the contractor can see different parts of that purchase. The employee may know what help actually arrived. The billing office sees the charges submitted for payment. For a move-management insider, the gap between those accounts can be the heart of the case.

How the Alleged Relocation Overbilling Worked

The government alleged two ways of overbilling: a charge for absent work and a charge based on an inapplicable rate. Each calls for a different comparison between the purchase and the invoice.

Move-Management Services Not Provided

The Department of Justice alleged that Franconia charged for move-management services that were not provided. The paid-for service is the point. A relocation invoice can be examined against the management work it says the government bought, as well as the movement of the property itself.

For an employee familiar with the work, that means the service description on the bill can be more revealing than the invoice total. We would want to understand what that charge represented, who was supposed to perform the work, and what the employee knows about whether it happened.

The government’s allegation comes down to a management fee. For no management. We see the unfairness to taxpayers and honest move managers: Franconia allegedly charged for work its customers never received, while a competitor doing the job had to provide the service it billed for.

Tariff Rates That Did Not Apply

On other moves, the government alleged that Franconia overbilled agencies by charging inapplicable tariff rates. Here the comparison is between the rate billed and the rate that belonged to the move under the purchasing terms.

The billing evidence has to connect the contract, the applicable tariff, the move and the invoice. A rate taken from a tariff still needs a contractual reason to apply to that transaction. The insider who understands that connection can explain why a charge is wrong in a way that looking at a dollar total cannot.

We would examine the pricing terms governing the move alongside the description of the services charged. One allegation concerns whether the billed work happened. The other concerns how the move was priced.

What a Relocation Insider Knows

Someone familiar with the move or the tariff can explain a discrepancy the bill itself conceals. An invoice supplies the company’s account of the charge. The useful detail is specific to the transaction: which management service was missing, or why the rate on that move did not apply.

Transparency International’s 2024 paper, Transparency, Accountability, and Integrity of Public Procurement Systems, explains a limit of outside oversight. People without the relevant expertise may struggle to assess whether a contractor delivered what was promised. Its example is road construction: an occasional visit by a non-expert may miss that too little material was used.

We see the same question of visibility in the relocation allegations. A person reading the invoice sees a charge for management. Someone who knows the work can explain what that management should have involved and whether it occurred. That is why we want to hear the operational account behind a bill, including the decisions that put a service or rate on it.

If your own work gives you that kind of view, our role is to understand the discrepancy with you and connect it to the government’s purchase. Your knowledge of how the work was done gives us a way to test the company’s billing account against the move itself.

How the Whistleblower Case Reached a Settlement

A former RE/MAX Allegiance Relocation Services employee filed the qui tam case under the False Claims Act in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The government joined and took over the case. The settlement resolved the allegations about move-management services and tariff rates.

The Department of Justice’s Civil Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia coordinated with agency inspectors general. The participating inspectors general were from the General Services Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Agriculture and NASA.

The announcement also provided for a whistleblower reward to the former employee. A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

A Related Pattern in Government Transportation Billing

The UPS Next Day Air whistleblower case began with a former employee who challenged the company’s transportation billing. The case included General Services Administration contracts, with promised delivery times that could entitle agencies to refunds when packages arrived late. In its settlement announcement, the Department of Justice alleged that UPS used false delivery times, exception codes and performance reports to conceal late deliveries and impede agency refunds.

That allegation concerned government contract refunds after late deliveries. Franconia’s concerned allegedly unprovided management services and inapplicable tariff rates. The common thread is the connection between the service, the contractual price and the contractor’s account of performance.

You Know the Move Behind the Bill

If you know which relocation services went unperformed or why the tariff on an agency’s invoice did not fit the move, speak with our Whistleblower Experts. We develop the case with you, bring in government procurement whistleblower lawyers who understand transportation billing, and stay beside you as your knowledge becomes the basis for pursuing the government’s recovery.