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Posted on 10/21/2025 8:58:41 AM PDT by Beave Meister
“I tell you pass throughs are a great thing!”
“We only do 20%… The rest goes to subs.:’
“And remember, there’s no competition…”
An O’Keefe Media Group undercover investigation has exposed how federal contractor ATI Government Solutions exploits minority-preference programs to secure more than $100 million in no-bid government contracts while subcontracting out the vast majority of the work.
We went undercover and arranged meetings with multiple ATI employees, to dig deeper into the truth behind their native american ownership, their small business status, and their excessive use of subcontractors, and what we found was more damning than we were ever expecting.
We posed as representatives from a cybersecurity firm “Sev-Zero Solutions” seeking to navigate the world of minority-owned government contracting – just like ATI. But our approach wasn’t through the front door of a federal bid meeting. Instead, we went through the kitchen.
We reached out to Melayne Cromwell under the guise of hiring her side business – Ragin’ Cajun Catering – to provide food for a corporate event we weren’t actually planning. We found her catering hustle listed on her LinkedIn profile.
The idea was to start the meeting with a casual conversation about catering. Halfway through, we’d “accidentally” realize she was in the same contracting space as us. Cue the surprise: We’d offer to connect her with my fake HR rep from Sev Zero, our fabricated cybersecurity company with a polished fake website to match.
(Excerpt) Read more at okeefemediagroup.com ...
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Being “shocked” about this reminds me of Casablanca.
When you have a government as large as ours, involved in every aspect of life, you will seep billions of dollars without a single person noticing.
Do we not have any accountants working for the Federal government?
But...the system is working EXACTLY how it was designed. It’s not the parasites who are mostly at fault. It is our Congress.
This grift is by no means unique to ATI Government Solutions, it is widespread in government contracting. Native Americans, and especially Eskimos, are first in line at Uncle Sugar’s feed trough.
I represent a number of govt contractors. It is rampant and EVERYBODY knows it happens. RE Eskimos, you’re absolutely correct. Bristol Bay has dozens of government contracts, and I don’t know that there are any Eskimos in its governing cadre.
I’ve seen instances in the DoD where, generally speaking, a certain percentage of each program must be awarded to minority set-aside contractors. Often these set-aside contractors were owned by a minority figure head whose only function was to qualify the contractor for these set asides. All too often these contractors were unqualified to perform the work. The contracting agency made the government contracting agency responsible for training the unqualifed to perform the work.
Very often the minority contractors are nothing more than shell companies that subcontract the actual work to non-minority companies.
This is probably breaking news only to people who have never been anywhere near the construction industry.
As far as I can tell, the accountants just check if the numbers add up. The accountant doesn’t know if a professor’s labor is worth $3000 or $30000.
An accountant would know what a pass through is. Or at least they should.
I thought we knew this has been going on for a very long time? I simply took it as common knowledge when a minority is given a preference contract that they have no way of fulfilling. Nearly 50 years ago I worked for one of the subs who did work for an american indian principal who received a contract for work with the BIA and everybody big enough to die knew it.
Myrddin wrote:
It is very common to have to shell company owned by a black woman.
Fresh Wind wrote:
...a certain percentage of each program must be awarded to minority set-aside contractors.
Very often the minority contractors are nothing more than shell companies that subcontract the actual work to non-minority companies.
Often, many of the minority contractors are headed by Indian (from India) women.
This isn’t limited to minority set asides. There are also set asides for small businesses.
I discovered this form of corruption years ago when I naively volunteered at nonprofits designed to help individuals/families in distress.
When the person-in-need calls, he/she is asked their name, address, phone number...then asked about the problem. After a heartrending explanation the caller is given the phone number of a different nonprofit, and told that’s who can help them. The next place does the same thing, passing the caller on to another nonprofit. This merry-go-round goes on and on, and the suffering person is NEVER given any help, but the nonprofits have added names and info to their list of individuals that they “helped”. The sum of these people then goes to the nonprofits’ funding sources: “We helped X amount of individuals last year. We must have more money to continue our work.”
I know that if you want to do business w/for Miami Dade County you’d better be a minority owned company or you aren’t sniffing anything. I think it was 20% higher bids they were allowed at some point.
Exactly. The last CEO of my Govt contracting firm sold the company and walked off with a couple hundred million dollars. Not one dime to all the past employees that help grow the company. F these parasites.
Can you say Clinton Foundation?
I think the only audit they ever had, they failed. Luckily for them, the Obama IRS allowed them to “amend” their tax filings and keep the money they’ve have and are continuing to skim for all their “charitable” activities . . .
Been in the Federal space for nearly 30 years. Started multiple companies, but we always knew that when an Alaskan 8a got involved it was a serious uphill battle. Basically anything under 100M, and they get major “special” handling for contracts. NJVC, Chenega, Tundra Federal, Copper River, jeez I could go on and on. We all know what they are, pass-through’s paying tribes to “say” they own 51%, but the majority of the profits stay depending on the arrangements. The Tribal BS should be ended, BIGGLY. Even the playing field, I still believe that the Big 8 should be forced to utilize small-business but no + ups for anything other than merit. God please get this to the President, DOGE, DOJ... it is rampant throughout the government. It’s EASILY $100B of BS.
I used to have the opposite problem. I was at a small, very high-tech speciality free-space optics firm. We were bidding and winning DOD research contracts, but we had to prove why we could not hire any minorities. There were no minorities with anywhere near the specialty skills we required and proving that was tough. But we finally got the needed exemption. What a PITA that was.
I’m glad I’m retired. It is a hard business for a straight white guy. I guess it is all that white privilege I had or something.
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