Former Vice President of Alberici Constructors and Subcontractor Sentenced on Fraud Charges

ST. LOUIS, MO—Clone Jefferson Oliver was sentenced to 60 months in prison for his participation in a scheme to defraud Alberici Constructors Inc. by inflating invoices.

Oliver, Apollo Beach, Florida, former vice president of construction at St. Louis-based Alberici, pled guilty to six counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering last September and appeared today for sentencing before United States District Judge Catherine D. Perry.

Sybil Smith, Special Agent in Charge of IRS-Criminal Investigation, said, “This is yet another example of multiple agencies working together with our financial fraud investigators to dismantle a sophisticated fraud scheme.”

According to court documents, Oliver was the project manager for Alberici on a project to build a water treatment plant in Arlington County, Virginia. Work on the project began in September 2006 and the cost of the project was $238,000,000. Oliver and Kenneth Marc Simmons, a subcontractor on the project, participated in a scheme to defraud Alberici through the preparation and submission of inflated invoices and false change orders for materials provided to the project by Simmons' business, Industrial and Municipal Supply (IMS). When IMS received payment on the bad invoices, Simmons kept a share and then forwarded money in the nature of kickbacks to Oliver. Simmons made many of the payments to a corporation formed by Oliver called Advanced Construction Solutions, which had the same initials (ACS) as another supplier to the Arlington project, American Construction Services. The court document refers to Oliver’s company as the “fake ACS,” while the latter company is referred to as the “real ACS.” Oliver admitted that, in the scheme to overpay IMS, Alberici was overbilled in the amount of $4.8 million from 2006 through 2011.

The real ACS provided welding services to the project. At Oliver’s direction, the owner of the real ACS billed Alberici for piping actually supplied by IMS in a situation where the real ACS provided only welding services on that piping. IMS invoiced the real ACS for that piping through inflated invoices of approximately $2,000,000. The real ACS included those billings in the invoices it submitted to Alberici for payment.

Oliver will be liable to pay Alberici the full $6.8 million in restitution. He also agreed that property and assets he acquired with the stolen money would be forfeited. This includes two houses in Florida (one in Apollo Beach and one in Zephyrhills), a diamond ring with platinum mounting, a 2010 Mercedes Benz vehicle, a 2007 Sea Ray boat, two SeaDoo Bombardier watercraft, and several bank accounts.

Co-defendant Kenneth Marc Simmons, La Grange, Georgia, pled guilty in September to two felony counts of mail fraud and two felony counts of wire fraud and was sentenced yesterday to 24 months prison and ordered to pay restitution of $4.8 million.

This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation. Assistant United States Attorneys Anthony Franks and Richard Finneran handled the case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.