Global Computer Enterprises, Inc. Agrees to Pay $9 Million to Settle Civil False Claims Act Allegations
It’s a sad state of affairs when fraud and business practice integrity issues run rampant among big corporations. Unfortunately, that is true of the world that we live in today. In April of this year one such corporation, Global Computer Enterprises, Inc. and its president and sole owner, Raed Muslimani agreed to pay $9 million to settle allegations brought forward by a False Claims Act whistleblower.
GCE is a cloud-based “software as a service” provider. The whistleblower alleged that GCE concealed its utilization of prohibited engineers and employees on software services contracts with the federal government. GCE was competitively awarded federal contracts with the U.S. Department of Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the General Services Administration, the United States Secret Service, and the United States Coast Guard. During the competitions for those contracts and after award, GCE allegedly misrepresented and/or concealed that it was utilizing engineers and other employees who were expressly prohibited from working on the contracts due to their citizenship/immigration statuses, security clearance statuses, labor qualifications and/or overseas locations.
A qui tam lawsuit was being prepared when GCE and Muslimani agreed to pay the United States $9 million out of GCE’s Chapter 11 proceeding to resolve the allegations filed under the False Claims Act. It is important to note that the civil claims settled by GCE, Muslimani and the United States were allegations only and there was no determination of civil liability. The settlement obtained in this matter was the result of a coordinated effort by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and the Financial Litigation Section and Fraud Section of the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice
