Boeing Settlement
The Boeing Company has agreed to pay the United States $4.4 million and to undertake several programmatic changes, resolving qui tam allegations that it improperly billed the Department of Defense for work at Boeing’s facility in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. Beginning in approximately 2003, the United States Department of Defense awarded Boeing contracts to produce and modify Chinook helicopters as part of the Army’s effort to modernize its fleet of heavy lift helicopters. More than 100 new Chinooks were ordered, and Boeing also agreed to “remanufacture” several hundred older Chinook helicopters by overhauling their airframes to accommodate upgrades of the helicopter’s avionics and engines. The vast majority of the work performed in the Chinook remanufacturing program was paid based on a pre-negotiated price. However, Boeing instructed the mechanics assigned to the Chinook program to perform other, non-billable work while separately billing the United States for their time, resulting in the United States being charged for work for which it had already paid.
