A Kansas man was sentenced to 29 months in prison for conspiring to steer fraudulently and award subcontracts by a major engineering firm for work on nuclear weapons manufacturing projects for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC).
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Michael Clinesmith, 70, of Overland Park, Kansas, solicited and received kickbacks and bribes from Richard Mueller, 65, of St. Charles, Missouri, in exchange for steering subcontracts from Clinesmith’s employer to Mueller’s company, known as subcontractor one.
Clinesmith, a long-tenured employee of a major engineering firm working at the KCNSC, was responsible for designing and procuring gages specifically manufactured to measure components of nuclear weapons.
“For more than a decade, the defendant exchanged his integrity and his employer’s trust for kickbacks from a dishonest contractor,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “To satisfy his greed, he corruptly steered contracts that were essential to ensuring the integrity of the nation’s nuclear weapons. Yesterday’s sentence reaffirms the Criminal Division’s commitment to rooting out fraud and corruption related to the procurement and manufacture of critically important products and services for the federal government and, ultimately, for United States taxpayers and to holding those accountable who commit these acts.”
Hellbound and Down 