Two Charged With Stealing $3.6 Million from PennDOT

Pair billed for work that had never been done.

Two men are charged with stealing $3.6 million from PennDOT, money taken by billing the agency for work never done and supplies never purchased. Thanh Nguyen, 62, of Montgomery County, and Robert Slamon, 54, of Berks County, were charged Thursday. The Patriot-News reports Nguyen owned a contracting business, and that Slamon was a PennDOT inspector. The latter man took bribes from the first in exchange for falsifying agency records, prosecutors say.

The two businesses that Nguyen used to contract with PennDOT are V-Tech Services Inc. (V-Tech) and Utility Line Clearance Inc. (ULC). The attorney general’s investigation uncovered that Nguyen stole the following money:

  • $660,000 from allegedly double billing on herbicide contracts;
  • $1.5 million billed and paid to his companies for herbicide chemicals allegedly never purchased or used for roadside spraying contracts for all five counties in District 6;
  • $1.1 million billed and paid to Nguyen’s companies for Philadelphia graffiti removal and street sweeping contracts where work was allegedly not performed.

Since 2009, V-Tech has received more than $15.7 million in District 6 contracts and ULC garnered more than $10.3 million in similar contracts.

Nguyen also allegedly inflated work hours and the number of people at job sites, according to the newspaper.

Here  is Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s summary of the case.