Michigan man charged with fraudulently obtaining nearly $12 million in VA construction contracts in Cleveland and Michigan by falsely claiming the company receiving the contracts was owned by a disabled veteran

A Michigan man was charged with fraudulently obtaining nearly $12 million in government construction contracts in Cleveland and Michigan by falsely claiming the company receiving the contracts was owned by a disabled veteran.

William Kozerski, 62, of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, was charged via criminal information with one count of wire fraud.

According to the information filed in federal court in Cleveland:

Congress established the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Program to help service-disabled veterans by setting aside certain contracts for small businesses majority owned and controlled by service-disabled veterans

CA Services was a construction company based in Michigan. Kozerski and CA Services held out that a service-disabled veteran was the owner and primary manager of CA Services when, in fact, the disabled veteran was not.

Kozerski, between 2007 and 2015, fraudulently claimed CA Services met the requirements of the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Program in order to obtain approximately $11.8 million in contracts for work at VA Medical Centers in Cleveland, Detroit and Ann Arbor.

If convicted, the defendant’s sentence will be determined by the Court after review of factors uniqueto this case, including the defendants’ prior criminal record, if any, the defendants’ role in the offenses and the characteristics of the violations.  In all cases, the sentence will not exceed the statutory maximum and in most cases it will be less than the maximum.

The investigation was conducted by Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Veteran Affairs – Office of Inspector General, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service -- Office of the Inspector General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Chelsea Rice and Robert Kern.

An indictment is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt.  A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.