An Illinois man has been charged with bilking $20 million from investors partly by telling them he had a contract with the Metro system that had actually fallen through, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC says that Gregory E. Webb touted his InfrAegis Inc. company to investors by telling them the company had a contract to install 15,000 machines that could detect the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the Washington subway system.
Metro has been stepping up its homeland security efforts since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks, including adding sensors behind the scenes to fight possible attacks to the vulnerable train system. But the complaint, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, says Metro never awarded InfrAegis a contract for the deployment of the “iaMedium” device in its tunnels and stations.
