Chelmsford man found guilty of using veterans to defraud government
A Chelmsford man was found guilty on Thursday of fraud and conspiracy charges after prosecutors said he hired disabled veterans as figureheads in order to win more than $100 million in government contracts.
David Gorski was accused of scheming to take advantage of the U.S. government’s requirement to provide a certain percentage of government contracts to companies run by service-disabled veterans.
Prosecutors said Gorski recruited a veteran of the Korean War to serve as a “straw owner” for his company, Legion Construction. He later added another disabled veteran to serve as the company’s figurehead.
With disabled veterans nominally in charge, Legion won more than $110 million in federal contracts between 2006 and 2010 from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the General Services Administration, the Army and the Navy, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
In reality, though, Gorski retained decision-making power at the company and used that money to pay himself a pricey salary, prosecutors said.
In addition, Gorski had sought to find ways around the federal requirement that a disabled veteran be the highest paid employee at the company, according to prosecutors.
Gorski faces up to 25 years in prison after a jury convicted him on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the government. He is scheduled to be sentenced in September.
“This is one of the rare times when the jury got it wrong,” Gorski’s attorney, Tracy Miner, told The Boston Globe in a statement. “The undisputed evidence showed that he consulted outside accountants and lawyers throughout and that nobody ever advised him to do anything differently.”
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