By SDCN Staff
The president of a metal fabrication and manufacturing company pleaded guilty on Feb. 5, to a conspiracy to rig bids for maintenance, repair, and operations contracts affecting United States military installations, earning his company more than $8.5 million dollars in rigged procurements, federal prosecutors said.
According to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Thomas C. Rollins, of Wilmington, North Carolina, was the president of a company that provided goods and services to military bases through procurements administered by the Defense Logistics Agency. Between at least 2015 and 2022, Rollins conspired with other individuals and companies to suppress and eliminate competition by rigging bids for the procurements administered by the agency, which were awarded to subcontractors through a competitive bidding process. Rollins and his co-conspirators coordinated their submission of rigged bids by agreeing in advance which co-conspirator would submit the lowest pricing and instructing each other how to price “comp” or “cover” bids. In the plea agreement, Rollins admitted that the volume of commerce attributable to him and related to the conspiracy was approximately $8.47 million.
“For seven years, this defendant deliberately chose to cheat instead of compete, harming the Department of War and the American people in the process,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Omeed Assefi of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “The Antitrust Division and its partners in the Procurement Collusion Strike Force are laser focused on detecting and prosecuting those who seek to tilt the scales in their favor at the expense of American taxpayers and warfighters.”
Rollins pleaded guilty to one felony count of restraining trade by conspiring to rig bids, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The maximum penalty for individuals is 10 years in prison and a $1 million criminal fine.
A sentencing hearing has not been scheduled in this case. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors. The Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service is investigating this case. The Antitrust Division’s Washington Criminal Section is prosecuting the case.
