U.S. Joins Suit Filed Against Lockheed Martin And Vendor

DALLAS,TX.(AP) – The federal government has joined a whistleblower lawsuit against defense contractor Lockheed Martin.

The suit claims Lockheed, along with a Texas vendor and its former executives, overcharged the government by millions of dollars.

In the lawsuit, a former TMI account executive and a TMI competitor alleges that former TMI President and Chief Executive Todd Loftis overcharged for manufacturing tools sold to Lockheed Martin.

The lawsuit says that resulted in Lockheed Martin submitting false claims to the Defense Department from January 1998 through February 2006.

The Justice Department says the complaint alleges that Lockheed is “independently liable” under the False Claims Act due to its “reckless oversight of TMI.”

Former TMI account executive John Becker and a competitor of the company, Robert Spencer, filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Dallas under a whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act.

Under the provision, a whistleblower can sue on behalf of the United States and receive part of the recovery.

Loftis has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government related to Fort Worth-based TMI’s overcharging.

In March, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for defrauding the government of $20 million by inflating the price of tools used by Lockheed Martin to manufacture airplanes.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)