NOVEMBER 9, 2023. Ohio-based GE Aerospace, a division of the General Electric Company, will pay $9,413,024 to settle claims that one of its manufacturing plants in Lynn, Massachusetts (GEA Lynn) sold parts that were not inspected properly or were not up to code to the United States Military.
GE Aerospace manufactures aircraft engines to sell to the U.S. military. GEA Lynn and all GE Aerospace locations are required to meet the standards of the military, which are laid out to workers in engineering drawings that they must follow, along with manufacturing instructions, which lay out the procedure for mandatory part inspections. In the settlement, GEA Lynn admitted that it failed to follow these protocols, either by ignoring them completely, or by selling parts that did not pass inspections.
From July 2014 through December 2019, GEA Lynn did not conduct required inspections on the parts it manufactured. Employees did not use functional gauges to examine parts on many occasions, also omitting curvic feature inspections on certain part numbers. GEA Lynn then sold engines containing those parts. It also sold engines that contained prohibited metal fragments to the Army and Navy, putting service members at risk for harm. The Acting U.S. Attorney on the case criticized the company, stating “GE Aerospace failed to follow important inspections requirements on engines it sold to the military … These rules exist for a reason – making sure the men and women we depend upon to protect our national security have the highest quality equipment.”
While there was no whistleblower in this case, the government relies on them to prevent fraudulent events such as this faulty part issue and other government defense fraud, or to rectify them faster. Additionally, whistleblowers are entitled to 15-25% of the government’s recovery in a qui tam False Claims Act settlement.
If you would like to report government contracting fraud, you can contact attorneys at Tycko & Zavareei LLP. Eva Gunasekera and Renée Brooker are former officials of the United States Department of Justice and prosecuted whistleblower cases under the False Claims Act. Renée served as Assistant Director at the United States Department of Justice, the office that supervises False Claims Act cases in all 94 United States District Courts. Eva was the Senior Counsel for Health Care Fraud. Eva and Renée now represent whistleblowers. For a free consultation, you can contact Renée at [email protected] (tel.: 202-417-3664) or contact Eva Gunasekera at [email protected]. You can also go to Tycko & Zavareei LLP’s website for whistleblowers to learn more at https://www.fraudfighters.net.