NetCracker Technology agreed to pay $11.4 million and to settle a whistleblower lawsuit by a NetCracker executive under the False Claims Act. According to the government and the lawsuit, from 2008 through 2013, NetCracker used employees without security clearances on part of a $613 million Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) contract when it knew the contract required those individuals to have clearances “î resulting in CSC submitting false claims for payment. The whistleblower, former NetCracker employee John Kingsley of Fairfax, will receive $2.4 million as his share of the recovery under the law, which allows individuals and groups to obtain a reward for reporting fraud against the U.S. government, officials said.
Kingsley, who headed NetCracker Government Services, alleged that NetCracker, with CSC’s knowledge, “delegated certain tasks to individuals located outside the United States who were not U.S. citizens” in at least two locations, and that “Code developed outside the United States was then placed in U.S. Government computer networks.”
NetCracker’s work allegedly involved building and maintaining the Defense voice system’s Network Change and Configuration Management System.
Although not specified in the final October complaint, Kingsley’s original lawsuit alleged that code was completed by Russian workers and placed on government networks “with no testing for back doors, time bombs, or other malicious triggers” by U.S.-cleared workers.
