Summary

On September 18, 2015, Aurelio Rafael Martinez, a.k.a. "Raffi", a painter contractor with the Alpha-Liberty Joint Venture, was sentenced in U.S. District Court, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was sentenced to one year in prison and three years of supervised release after a guilty plea in June 2015 to charges related to a fraudulent employment scheme.

From January 2010 through December 2012, Martinez made false statements and utilized a false Social Security Number in order to fraudulently obtain employment on the Girard Point Bridge in Philadelphia; a $74 million project funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  The investigation revealed that he also fraudulently obtained work on two other DOT-funded projects; the $50 million 30th Street Station project in Philadelphia and the $31 million Bay Bridge project in Annapolis, Maryland. In September 2014, Martinez fled the Bay Bridge work site to avoid arrest, but surrendered to federal agents several days later. 

This case is part of a larger DBE fraud investigation involving bridge painting contracts, which we are working jointly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Labor (DOL)-OIG, Homeland Security Investigations, Social Security Administration-OIG, Internal Revenue Service-CID; Environmental Protection Agency-CID, and Amtrak-OIG.