The General Services Administration (GSA) is a federal agency that supplies products and services for government offices, provides transportation and office space to federal employees, and develops government-wide cost-minimizing policies. It oversees an annual procurement budget of about $66 billion, and helps manage about $500 billion in federal property, including buildings and vehicles.
Because the GSA is funded by the federal government, companies who do business through the GSA contracts must disclose current, accurate, and complete commercial discounts, so that the GSA can get the best prices on behalf of American taxpayers. But that does not always happen.
Examples
To highlight one example, CA Inc. agreed to pay $45 million to resolve allegations that it made false statements and claims when negotiating and administering GSA contracts for software licenses and maintenance services. The 2017 settlement resolved allegations that CA provided false information to the GSA about the discounts it gave commercial customers for its software licenses and maintenance services and failed to provide government customers with additional discounts when commercial discounts improved.
In 2015, VMware Inc. and Carahsoft Technology Corporation agreed to pay $75.5 million to resolve allegations that they misrepresented their commercial pricing and overcharged the government on VMware software products and services. VMware specializes in virtualization software and Carahsoft distributes IT products to federal, state, and local governments. Both companies allegedly lied to the government about their pricing structures for over five years.
Overseeing billions of dollars and touching many industries, there is no shortage of fraud against the government in the area of the GSA. While it is the whistleblower who initiates 80% of fraud against the government that is exposed, the vast majority of it goes undetected.