A whistleblower will receive nearly $800,000 as part of a government settlement with U.S. defense contractor L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., which was accused of over billing the military for training hours at Fort Benning and another military base in Texas.
L-3, without admitting any wrongdoing, agreed to pay $4.63 million to settle the case. From November 2006 through November 2011, its workers were trained at Fort Benning and Fort Bliss, Texas, to service and maintain helicopters and rotary aircraft. The workers were then deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Kuwait to support the U.S. military.
Rather than billing the military based on the actual hours that each L-3 employee spent training at the bases, government prosecutors said L-3’s billing was based on how long it took the entire group to complete training each day.
Robert Martin, a former L-3 independent contractor, filed a whistleblower lawsuit in Georgia under the False Claims Act. He will receive $798,675 for his role in the case. Under the act, a private citizens can bring suit on behalf of the government for false claims and share in any recovery.
Martin’s Atlanta attorney said the independent contractor trained at both Fort Benning and Fort Bliss and witnessed hours being inflated at both locations.
“He saw an obvious pattern of abuse because he went through three training sessions,” attorney Lee Wallace said in a statement. “A whistleblower has to come forward or the Government will never know what happened,” .
L-3 did not immediately respond to the settlement.
The U.S. Justice Department said three L-3 companies were involved in the settlement: L-3 Communications Corp., Vertex Aerospace LLC and L-3 Communications Integrated Systems LP.
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