Two Florida defense contractors face federal bribery and fraud charges after allegedly paying off a U.S. Army employee and inflating government contracts to pocket nearly $1.9 million intended for a military innovation lab in Hawaii, the Justice Department announced.
Leonard Pick, 62, of Palm Beach Shores, and Brian Kent, 59, of Tampa, were indicted in the District of Hawaii on May 14. The indictment was unsealed Tuesday. Both are charged with conspiring to corrupt the procurement process for the U.S. Army Pacific Command’s Hawaii-Pacific Innovation Campus, a facility built to test cutting-edge technologies for the Defense Department.
According to the indictment, Pick and Kent conspired between January 2021 and October 2022 to bribe an unnamed Army employee with approximately $1.25 million spread over five years. They allegedly disguised the payments by fraudulently inflating costs on government contracts.
Kent faces an additional charge of separately funneling roughly $680,000 into his personal consulting business by inflating contract costs further, starting around September 2020.
“When defense contractors obtain government-funded work through bribery and fraud, they rob our military and the American people of the benefits of a fair, competitive procurement process,” said Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Daniel W. Glad of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division.
U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson for the District of Hawaii said the conduct “harms honest companies seeking to compete fairly, steals from our taxpayers, and erodes faith in our government institutions.”
FBI Special Agent in Charge David Porter of the Honolulu Field Office called the scheme “a profound betrayal of the public trust” and said the bureau would “aggressively pursue” anyone who corrupts government procurement.
Both men face one count each of conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, major fraud against the United States, and wire fraud. Kent faces one additional count of major fraud. Wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Bribery carries up to 15 years. Major fraud carries up to 10 years and a $1 million fine.
The investigation was conducted jointly by the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Hawaii, the FBI, the Army Criminal Investigative Division, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the GSA’s Office of Inspector General, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The case is part of the Justice Department’s Procurement Collusion Strike Force, a multiagency effort targeting fraud and anticompetitive conduct in federal contracting.
