A former FEMA employee has been offered a plea deal that would resolve charges he helped a government contractor fraudulently obtain a $100 million contract for maintaining thousands of government-issued shelters in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
A court filing by Robert Blevins’ attorney, Gary Schwabe Jr., says his client is reviewing an offer by prosecutors for a “potential negotiated plea.”
Blevins’ trial is scheduled to start Nov. 7, but Schwabe asked U.S. District Judge Lance Africk for more time to weigh the plea offer and prepare for a possible trial. Africk didn’t immediately rule on whether to postpone the trial.
Blevins and David Dangler, owner of 3-D Disaster Services Inc., were charged in March with conspiracy to violate a federal conflict-of-interest law and wire fraud. Blevins also faces a witness tampering charge.
Schwabe says Dangler, a U.S. citizen who lived in Honduras at the time of his indictment, remains at large.
In March 2006, FEMA awarded Dangler’s company a contract worth up to $100 million for servicing thousands of travel trailers in Plaquemines Parish after the August 2005 storm. The indictment says Blevins assisted Dangler with the contract proposal before he resigned from FEMA in April 2006. The agency paid Dangler’s company more than $31 million under the contract between May 2006 and January 2010.
Blevins, 74, of South Carolina, went to work for 3-D Disaster Services after his resignation and was paid with proceeds from the FEMA contract, according to the indictment.
Topics Fraud
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