A masonry company that became embroiled in a bribery scheme during the restoration of 30th Street Station’s facade will pay $7.2 million to resolve civil claims for kickbacks paid to an Amtrak employee, federal prosecutors said Friday. <\/p>\n
The settlement completes a wide-ranging investigation of misused funds from a federal contract that was awarded to Illinois-based Mark 1 Restoration in December 2015. After the company received a $58 million contract for the project, Mark 1 executives paid off an Amtrak employee for inside information and assistance inflating invoices to overbill the transit company by more than $2 million. <\/p>\n
MORE:\u00a0For Tattooed Mom to resume live music performances, L&I says it must obtain permits and a license<\/a><\/p>\n Mark 1 Restoration owner Mark Snedden, 70, and three other company executives were each charged in the scheme and pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and related offenses. <\/p>\n In total, Mark 1 paid Amtrak project manager Ajith Bhaskaran $323,686 in gifts between 2016 and 2019, prosecutors said. Bhaskaran used the money to pay for lavish personal expenses. He bought an $11,000 Tourneau watch, $2,000 steakhouse dinner, tickets to a Bruno Mars concert, limo rentals, a $9,500 vacation to India and a purebred puppy that cost him $5,350 to train, according to court documents. <\/p>\n Bhaskaran, of Cherry Hill, died in 2020 while awaiting trial for his role in the scheme and negotiating a plea deal for an unrelated Social Security fraud charge. Two other Amtrak employees also were fired during the investigation, which began in 2018 when Amtrak’s inspector general received an anonymous letter about the scheme. The FBI later raided Mark 1’s headquarters. <\/p>\n \u201cBribery strikes at the heart of the rule of law,\u201d Wayne A. Jacobs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division, said<\/a> in a statement. \u201cStealing and misusing federal funds is not only a crime, but it betrays the trust of the communities we serve and erodes confidence in the systems they rely on.”<\/p>\n The settlement reached Friday requires Mark 1 and Snedden to make a $2.4 million payment and release Amtrak from liability for $4.86 million that the transit company did not pay the contractor after uncovering the kickback scheme. <\/p>\n Snedden was sentenced<\/a> to 90 months in prison, one year of probation and a $250,000 fine in October. Mark 1 Vice President Khaled Dallo was sentenced<\/a> to two months in prison, one year of probation and community service along with a $20,000 fine for his role in the scheme. Chief Operating Officer Lee Maniatis was sentenced<\/a> to 18 months in prison and three years of probation. Senior Executive Vice President Donald Seefeldt was sentenced to 57 months in prison, one year of probation and community service along with a $50,000 fine. <\/p>\n All four Mark 1 executives were ordered to pay joint restitution of more than $2 million. The Federal Railroad Administration permanently suspended them from participating in federally funded procurement and non-procurement activities. <\/p>\n The total facade restoration contract was valued at over $87 million, with federal funding covering about 90% of the money Amtrak used to pay Mark 1. Contract modifications that were made in exchange for kickbacks led to $52 million of additional payments that Amtrak approved for the company, prosecutors said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another investigation found that construction management firm Vega Solutions, which had been hired to oversee the work, also bribed Bhaskaran with about $150,000 in cash payments and engaged in a billing fraud scheme during the same period from 2016 to 2019. Vega Solutions owner Madhura Atitkar pleaded guilty to multiple offenses in 2023. He was sentenced<\/a> to 36 months of probation, 100 hours of community service and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine.<\/p>\n The inflated cost of the project, including contract modifications and overbilling, reached about $109 million<\/a>, Bhaskaran said in 2018 before the kickback scheme was uncovered.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Integrity in federal contracting isn’t optional,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said in a statement. “If you try to buy favors or submit false certifications, expect both civil and criminal consequences.”<\/p>\n The 30th Street Station restoration is a $10 billion, 35-year plan<\/a> that includes the ongoing $550 million project<\/a> to renovate the station’s concourse<\/a>, revamp its dining and retail options and redesign the Market Street plaza. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A masonry company that became embroiled in a bribery scheme during the restoration of 30th Street Station’s facade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7631,36118,1942,46,10716,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-247014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-30th-street-station","tag-amtrak","tag-bribery","tag-courts","tag-fraud","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}