KPI industries-- Coos Bay Oregon....DOD HELO DEATHS??

They are being sentenced in Dec. for defrauding the DOD out of 10 mil. for defective components on helos for the military that may have caused crashes and deaths.

A component that was critical was a knockoff and in some cases never ordered or delivered. Had something to do with the rotar.

I seen this on KVAL.com but the story has since been removed from the main page.

Several year time frame.

Please help me look into this cause some locals are questionong lost loved ones on ROUTINE exercises that crashed due to mechanical failure not to mention our seal teams and others since due to mechanical failure,

Zaph. and Project Tv and others ..... please look into this. kval took the story down mid afternoon, but its out there somewhere..

I would like to konow WHO or what committee authorized THIS contract from a DOD/Pentagon level.

Coos Bay is a LOOOng way fromDC.
If I can connect the dots, I would GLADLY expose them!

here's a page

1 more

uno mas

Amanda Marshall, United States Attorney for the District of Oregon, emphasized the serious nature of the charges: “The allegation that military personnel were placed in harm’s way for the sole purpose of financial profit warrants vigorous investigation and prosecution.”

A criminal indictment is only an allegation and not evidence of guilt. All defendants are presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty.

The case is being investigated by the Department of Defense/Office of Inspector General/Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Army Criminal Investigative Division Major Procurement Fraud Unit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, the Social Security Administration/Office of Inspector General, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U. S. Attorney Sean B. Hoar.

It was for rotor locknuts for the OH-58 Kiowa/Kiowa Warrior.

To highlight one contract, the United States set out the defendants’ actions related to the provision of aviation locknuts. In 2008, KPI was awarded contracts to supply aviation locknuts to the DOD, which were used to secure the blades to the main rotary assembly of the Kiowa Helicopter. The locknuts were flight critical and of proprietary design to be acquired from only two approved manufacturers, SPS or Bristol Industries. Rather than obtain the locknuts from one of the approved sources, Nicholas Bettencourt contacted Coloc Manufacturing in Texas and arranged with them to make and deliver thousands of non-conforming locknuts for fulfillment of the contract. Coloc was unaware that the parts they were contracted to manufacture were proprietary and were to be used in a flight-critical military application. In August 2008, the defective locknuts were detected throughout the military supply chain, which triggered the issuance of a DOD-wide safety alert, a worldwide inspection of all aircraft and stockpiles. After DOD notified KPI about the defective parts, Nicholas Bettencourt provided the DOD officials with false information in an attempt to cover up the acquisition of the defective locknuts.

KPI was also contacted by a DOD inspector, who requested KPI officials provide a written response as to the cause of the deficiency. KPI, through employee Josh Kemp, provided the DOD with a false explanation as to why the locknuts were not in compliance with the contract requirements, explaining that the parts were pulled from the wrong storage bin.

Even after the defendants were notified of the deficiency, instead of replacing the defective parts with authentic parts from the approved manufacturers, they went back to Coloc and directed them to re-machine another batch of non-conforming locknuts to more closely resemble the authentic part. The additional defective locknuts were shipped to the DOD, all with complete disregard for the contract specifications on this critical application and the potential for catastrophic failure to the helicopter and injury or death to the occupants as a result.

Again, when the second batch of defective locknuts were detected in the supply chain, DOD officials requested acquisition records from KPI. In response, Nicholas Bettencourt, in conjunction with Margo Densmore, created false records that reflected that the correct parts were ordered by KPI and supplied to the military. Several more requests for records were made by DOD officials, and in response to these requests, Harold Bettencourt II provided the DOD with falsified records and false explanations as to the origin of the defective locknuts. KPI, through Margo Densmore, altered purchase orders to indicate that the correct parts were ordered, and produced those altered documents to DOD officials and investigators. Harold Bettencourt II also provided DOD officials with these false purchase orders and provided DOD officials with a price quote from a parts dealer for authentic conforming parts that KPI never actually ordered. Harold Bettencourt II obtained this quote for the purpose of deceiving the DOD into believing that the correct parts had been ordered.

www.fbi.gov...

Isnt this at least tantamount to manslaughter charges?
Criminal Contempt?
The expression hardly covers such heinous greed.....
hang em high....

Your 1 More article from Kval was the one I was trying to find...... Thank you!

I don't have any polite words for the rest of this.

The gov. wastes waaay too much money on contracts with no oversight.
Waaay toooo many comapnies and connected folks that know the pot of gold rests with the gov contracts because they pay more than double what its worth.

nothing nice to say beyond that

a reply to: palmalBlue2

From what I understand counterfeit goods are a plenty in this world. You would need a very good eye to tell if it's real or fake. Even the US military isn't safe from them...clearly. it is a serious problem. Enjoy that thought the next time you fly somewhere or drive your car.

Wiki - Counterfeit Consumer Goods

a reply to: palmalBlue2Good thread find OP .There are two things abut this sad story I find unbelievable.

Firstly that these idiots actually had the arrogance to try and rip off the DoD not once but twice. If they had simply covered up after the first recall and purchased from the legitimate supplier they would still have made plenty of money for what really was very little effort, after all they aren't manufacturing the items someone else is. This also begs the question as to why the DoD didn't twig what was happening the first time. Why didn't the investigators go back to the only two authorized manufacturers and cross reference purchasing contracts that would have exposed the fraud in minutes?

And second, why exactly does the DoD need these kinds of middlemen companies anyway? All they do is purchase from a list of approved manufacturers of parts and equipment then forward them to the military's supply chain system. All they achieve is another layer of bureaucracy and another big and unnecessary markup to be paid by taxpayers? Stupidity like this would be a great place to start if they really want to trim down the US defence budget.

LEE.

a reply to: thebozeian

You don't think that they really paid all that money for lock nuts do you? Or $6,000 for toilet seats, or $600 for hammers.

a reply to: thebozeian

the last thing that needs to happen is a trimming of the defense budget.

the whole 25% is unaccounted for pre 9/11 thing is necessity IMO. war is fast and loose and cant be played in black and white with daily spending reports...

it needs to be pretty much like it is. they "keep track" of every thing in such a way that most people are cool with it and they still manage to maintain a serious amount of "black" activity

i understand that this requires a religious amount of faith in our military to be responsible (which IMO the irresponsible party is usually a contractor) with our dollars. We give these guys enough faith to trust them to travel across the planet with deadly intent in the name of our country, we might as well give them the faith to arm themselves in a way that makes them most comfortable to achieve said deadly intent.

they've managed to pad the difference with these middle man companies and all kinds of bureaucratic games but thats turned war into a big ole game of hide the dollar and thats gotta be holding us back something fierce.

sadly this has been going on for most of recorded history (and I'm sure long before that) lots of buddy buddy contracts and lowest bidder BS... its sad when you think about the victims... the boots on the ground..

a reply to: Zaphod58
As a professional machinist, this stuff chaps my hide.
That's way you get when lowest bidder gets the job. I owned my shop for nearly a decade and my insurance underwriter, the largest in the country for small Mfg ers, explicitly forbade aerospace parts.
And a friend of mine was put out of business, by not keeping up with his documentation.
You need to have a paper trail from the time that metal was poured at the mill to final inspection before shipping.
The level of forging paperwork would have to been astounding in this case.
I also lay blame on the shop in Texas for not doing the job right. If they had done their jobs, the parts would have been indistinguishable from the "proper" part. I'm not talking visibly indistinguishable, but mechanically indistinguishable.
I am in the business of "knocking off" stuff, but not in the counterfeit goods way. We manufacture parts for custom built equipment, where the originating Mfg, rther doewnt makethe part anymore or never did supply spares or are in a foreign country and parts are 6-8 months away , for a company that runs 24/7/365 losing production is not an option.
In some cases the originating Mfg will supply original drawings but usually I have to reverse engineer it.

a thought just occurred to me and id google it but my cpu is acting up and opening new tabs takes ages.

During WW2 when the auto industry and just plain INDUSTRY of our country got on board and started cranking out military firepower was it a "government takeover help help help" sorta thing or was it a "feeding frenzy at the tax payers expense" sort of thing? did GM get contracted by uncle sam to produce tanks and to stamp plane parts?

the american highway system already is a giant "Defensive structure" that was meant for military use that got contracted out to company after company and state after state and it still does. was just curious if this is just the norm. dont you guys reckon we would be even more of a powerhouse if we did things differently? I've never been enlisted so i guess i dont really know just from an outsider view it looks like you guys are being asked to go fight a war with handcuffs on.

a reply to: punkinworks10

a good machinist can IMPROVE upon the original with a good "Knock off" your not kidding about the shop in texas fuzzing up thats just silly of them to do it twice. is this just stupidity at its finest or full blown malicious intent? greediness? the court case will be one to read about thats for sure.

a reply to: punkinworks10

I've seen too many people lost over stupid things like this. It makes me sick to see too. I think these people should be thrown under the jail and left to rot until they tear the prison down.

a reply to: Zaphod58I hear what you are saying Zaph. I guess the black project money needs to come from some place.

Actually I am aware that my own company has been doing something like this for a while in order to hide the true cost of its low cost carrier operations. A colleague came in one night and was asked to look at a defect on an A330-200 belonging to the LCC, identical spec with the mainline companies 330's and apart from interior trim totally interchangeable between group companies. he found the problem then ordered the part through their stock inventory system and noted the part cost as he did which was $250AU. Next night he comes in and gets the same job on one of the mainline carriers A330's. Same defect and same P/N required. As he ordered it through our mainline companies parts system he noticed the cost of the part was TEN times greater! Coincidentally our International division despite having flights go out to places like HK absolutely full supposedly suddenly lost about $300 million last profit announcement. Meanwhile they are quietly tipping almost $30 million per month into their sad attempt at an Asian LCC that has planes and crews sitting idle on the ground costing lease money and wages, while authorities in several countries in Asia have spent about a year to "process" the application to operate, still without result. I'll let the reader do the maths on that one.

So no I'm not surprised by this story or $600 hammers.

LEE.

a reply to: mindseye1609
Its likey that the problem wasnt mechanical but a material issue. That's one of the most common issues with stuff like this.
Say the part spec calls for hot drawn 4340cro mo that is quenched and tempered before machining.
Instead of 4340 a cold drawn normalized 4140, there could be a 50% difference in yield stremgth.

I still don't see how they were able pass those parts off, we do a couple of parts were we have to special order plastics, that have someone from the fda follows that resin from powder to molded rods and sign off on it before they are shipped.

a reply to: punkinworks10

aye i was basically referring to that. or if for times sake the original didnt heat treat all the way or whatever. you know what i mean. always a way to put that "perfect touch" onto something.

hey check your DM i got some metal questions for you if you got a minute