Investigations

Irie L. Turner, Jr., a former contracts and procurement manager for the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (CMTA) of Austin, TX, was ordered by a U.S. District Court judge in Austin, to pay a $10,000 fine for his role in a conspiracy to defraud CMTA. Turner pleaded guilty in January to conspiring with James Vickers, Jr., in a scheme where Vickers paid Turner to win a $13,000 contract. As part of the scheme, Vickers, a former Lexis-Nexis director of product development and marketing, and senior vice-president of Purconn Unlimited, arranged to pay Turner more than $20,000 through fraudulent invoices to Lexis-Nexis. Turner illegally awarded “low-bidder” Purconn procurement contracts on a project to produce a vendor application form and a policy and procedure manual. The manual provided to CMTA was a plagiarized copy of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Authority Procurement Regulations. Turner was also sentenced to 1 month in prison and placed on supervised release for 36 months. FTA is undertaking debarment proceedings against Purconn. In September 2001, Vickers was sentenced to 1 month in jail and restoration of $32,000. The investigation was conducted jointly by OIG and the FBI.