Last month, a jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina found a former executive of Ohio-based Contech Engineered Solutions LLC, Brent Brewbaker, guilty of conspiracy to rig bids, conspiring to commit fraud, and related charges on over 300 North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) projects. Brewbaker faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for the bid-rigging conspiracy count and 20 years for each of the other counts.
Between 2009 and 2018, Brewbaker submitted multiple non-competitive, inflated bids to NCDOT for aluminum headwalls and other drainage structures on various road and bridge projects. Contech, at Brewbaker's direction, would identify NCDOT projects on which a co-conspirator and customer planned to bid, discover the co-conspirator's bid price, and submit intentionally higher bids on the project to create the illusion that the two companies were competing. Meanwhile, Contech supplied the aluminum structures to be installed on the project, benefiting from the project being awarded to its "competitor." Brewbaker attempted to conceal his scheme by varying the amount of said bids and deleting evidence of the conspiracy from his cell phone. Brewbaker's criminal convictions come on the heels of Contech's prior guilty plea to one count of bid rigging under the federal Sherman Antitrust Act, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, which resulted in a $7 million fine and $1.5 in restitution to NCDOT.
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