It was Dejuan Fountain’s job to protect U.S. Army communication systems. But prosecutors say he instead used his knowledge of military communications to steal $4 million from companies that handle payments for federal contract accounts.
Fountain, an Army officer in Georgia, and two Washington-area civilians represented themselves as a communications company with multimillion-dollar military contracts, according to an indictment filed Monday in Maryland’s federal court. They then persuaded two companies — one of them in Bethesda — that hand out the dollars for federal contracts to provide partial advance payments on their allegedly fake contracts.
Laurel resident Rafael Simmons is accused of creating the company and laundering the cash. Rodney A. Mathis, of Stafford, allegedly posed as an Army contracting officer.
“This indictment alleges that an Army warrant officer conspired with two other men to defraud finance companies by falsely representing that services had been provided to the government,” U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said.
Known as factoring companies, Bethesda-based Federal National Payables Inc. and Associated Receivables Funding Inc. in South Carolina paid the men a little more than $4 million, prosecutors said.
Mathis is accused of posing as an Army contracting officer to convince the companies that genuine contracts — represented as classified communications projects — existed and that they could expect the government to cover the costs, court documents said. Fountain is accused of playing a similar role but also posing as the chief executive officer for the company run by Simmons. Fountain used the dual roles to obtain the advance payments, authorities alleged.
For the scheme to work, the three men had to convince the companies that the contracts were real, prosecutors said.
To do so, they sent payments to each company making the payments appear as though they came from the government, court documents said. In fact, the payments allegedly came from bank accounts the defendants controlled. When future payments were slow to come, Fountain and Mathis allegedly used fake Army e-mail addresses to inform the factoring companies that the government payments had accidentally been misdirected.
Fountain and Mathis face up to 140 years in prison and a $3.1 million fine. Mathis faces up to 180 years in prison and an $8 million fine. All three men were arrested in late July and have been released on bail.
