Company President Gets Jail for Lying About HAZWOPER Training

The president of a Port Arthur, Tex., based firm was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet in Manhattan federal court to 30 months in prison for defrauding the United States Postal Service (USPS) in connection with the 2001 anthrax decontamination of the USPS Morgan Processing and Distribution Center, located in Manhattan, and for making a false statement to an OSHA employee during an OSHA investigation relating to the decontamination. In addition, Judge Sweet ordered the company president to pay $1,385,971.31 in restitution to the USPS.

The company president pled guilty on July 31, 2003, to a criminal indictment charging that he falsely represented that his company’s workers who participated in the anthrax decontamination had the training required for the job when in fact they did not. The USPS paid more than $1.6 million for their services.

The Morgan facility houses machines used for the processing and sorting of mail. In October 2001, anthrax bacteria was determined to be present on some of those machines. The USPS entered into a contract for cleaning and decontamination in Morgan. The USPS required all workers performing the anthrax decontamination to have received specialized training, called “HAZWOPER” training. Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) training is required by OSHA rules for certain workers involved in operations that expose or potentially expose them to hazardous substances such as biological and disease-causing agents. Among other things, the OSHA rules require a minimum of 40 hours of training, succeeded by eight hours of refresher training annually, in the use of personal protective equipment, work practices to minimize risks, and symptoms and signs which might indicate overexposure to hazards. The rules also require that those who have received and successfully completed HAZWOPER training be given written certificates to indicate they have successfully completed the training.

According to the indictment, some of the Morgan decontamination work was subcontracted to the Texas-based company. From Nov. 1, 2001, through Dec. 8, 2001, workers employed by the company, together with workers employed by other contractors, performed cleaning and decontamination services on the machines where anthrax had been determined to be present.

The company president admitted at the time of his guilty plea that he knew that his workers had not received the required HAZWOPER training. Nonetheless, as alleged in the indictment, in order to ensure that the workers would be permitted to be involved in those operations so that he would be paid for and profit from their work, the company president falsely represented that his workers had received the requisite HAZWOPER training and took steps to conceal the fact that they had not. Those steps included creating and submitting bogus HAZWOPER training certificates for the workers, lying about the training given to the workers, instructing some of the workers to lie about their training, and submitting documents to OSHA that falsely represented that the workers had received HAZWOPER training
during 2001.

On Nov. 17, 2001, an OSHA employee interviewed the company president, who falsely stated that he had given all of his workers 40 hours of hazardous materials training.

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