Former Employee of Technology Firms Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud Conspiracy

WASHINGTON—Sarosh Mir, a former employee of two technology firms which did business with the District of Columbia’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), has pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in an alleged bribery and kickback scheme, Acting U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips, Joseph Persichini, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and Charles Willoughby, Inspector General for the District of Columbia, announced today.

Mir, 44, of Herndon, Virginia, pled guilty before the Honorable Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. yesterday to a one-count information that charges him with Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud. Sentencing was set for November 6, 2009. Mir was previously employed by Advanced Integrated Technology Corporation (AITC), a District of Columbia technology firm owned by Sushil Bansal, who has also been charged in the scheme. Mir admitted that he then incorporated a second company at Bansal’s behest, Innovative IT Solutions, Inc. (IITSI), and was the nominal president, although it was actually Bansal’s company. Both AITC and IITSI were awarded contracts with OCTO.

During his guilty plea, Mir admitted to participating in a scheme between July 2008 and March 2009 to defraud the District of Columbia Government by submitting false and fraudulent time sheets and invoices that reflected inflated work hours for some employees, as well as submitting false and fraudulent time sheets and invoices for “ghost employees”—individuals who were not employed by AITC or IITSI and who did no work for those companies or for OCTO. Mir admitted that he supplied the name of a friend to be used in the ghost employee scheme. The monetary loss to the District of Columbia Government associated with Mir’s involvement in the scheme was over $124,000.

The maximum penalty for conspiracy to commit wire fraud is five years of incarceration.

In announcing the guilty plea, Acting U.S. Attorney Phillips, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Persichini, and D.C. Inspector General Willoughby commended the outstanding investigative work of Special Agents of the FBI and the D.C. Office of the Inspector General.

They also acknowledged the efforts of U.S. Attorney’s Office paralegals Diane Hayes and Tasha Harris, former legal assistant Lisa Robinson, as well as Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas Hibarger and Glenn Leon, who are prosecuting this case.