I thought an article(s) was posted when this firm was first charged, but I cannot locate it.

Minority-owned firm charged in Chicago

Published: Feb. 4, 2010 at 4:02 PM

CHICAGO, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- The owner of a Chicago firm was indicted Thursday on fraud charges in connection with O'Hare International Airport contracts.

The U.S. attorney's office said the firm, Azteca Supply Co., is city-certified as a minority- and woman-owned business. As such, it could not broker services with other non-minority companies. The owner, Aurora Venegas, her husband, Thomas Masen, and the company were named in the indictment.

The defendants allegedly steered minority contracts through the company and fraudulently collected more than $9.5 million for three projects, including two at O'Hare, between 2001 and 2008. The company was hired as a sham contractor on runway and restroom projects at O'Hare, and a landscaping project at a new Metra commuter rail station in the south suburban Village of Orland Park, U.S. officials said in a statement.

Venegas, 61, and Masen, 65, allegedly made it appear in an interview with an investigator for the city of Chicago that the company kept an inventory of concrete pipe at a plant where Masen worked, officials said, with Venegas allegedly staging Azteca's warehouse to look like it had inventory by borrowing from another company.

Azteca allegedly brokered with two other companies to provide concrete pipe for the runway project.

Officials said despite being employed by "Company A," Masen frequently told Venegas and Azteca how Azteca should charge for goods sold to customers and how much Venegas should mark up those items. Masen also frequently acted directly with Azteca's customers and used Azteca as a "pass-through" to make it appear that customers were purchasing goods from Azteca when, in fact, they were purchasing goods directly from "Company A," the indictment alleged.

"The use of sham minority contractors cheats not only the governments that provide opportunities to bid on public contracts, but it also deprives legitimate minority and women-owned businesses from competing to obtain work on such projects," said U.S. attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a statement.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/02/ ... 265317345/