They were former employees of the firm whose seals/signatures (and software) they were using. It's amazing that over the course of more than 10 years that they were supposedly doing this on hundreds of projects, no AHJ or contractor or anybody else ever contacted the engineering firm for any reason. I constantly have contractors trying to send submittals straight to the engineer, local fire marshals calling the engineers directly, etc.
Mar 10, 20 12:29 pm ·
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Gloominati
I have frequently experienced incidents of the fire marshall calling whoever's stamp in on the particular sheet that they're looking at. On a structural or sprinkler sheet or whatever that's not the architect's stamp, it's the engineer's. Likewise, contractors pull this all the time: they think that they can negotiate changes directly with the engineers.
This sort of thing happens here on average 6-8 times per average-sized project - so in this instance, where these two were at this for at least 11 years and on 500+ projects, it's tough to believe that nobody ever once called the engineers' whose names and stamps they were using.
These guys weren't using their own names with someone else's stamp number - they were using the company name of their former employer and the names and seals of that former employer's engineers. The scam was that everybody involved believed that the former employer firm was the one involved with these projects. Your photo database won't prevent that, because it's not an issue of these fraudsters impersonating other people. It's an issue of them representing that the other firm was their consulting engineering firm when in fact they weren't involved with the projects.
Mar 10, 20 3:03 pm ·
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OddArchitect
And the two perps only got 1 year for this? Yikes!
Mar 10, 20 4:58 pm ·
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Almosthip7
Chad...that was my thought. Not long enough
Mar 10, 20 6:06 pm ·
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tduds
How's the studying going, Rick?
Mar 10, 20 7:31 pm ·
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Fivescore
The guys who were convicted had their own firm. They were using their own firm's name, but they were submitting civil drawings with the firm name of the place where they used to work, using stamps and seals of engineers from the place where they used to work. They were representing that the firm where they used to work was their consultant, but they were actually doing those "consultant" drawings themselves. That's pretty hard to catch unless somebody does contact every consultant listed in a set to verify. That's never going to happen as a matter of course on every project. But yeah, with that many projects it's surprising that nothing ever came up where somebody would have contacted the engineering firm sooner, about some issue somewhere on one of these projects.
Mar 10, 20 7:47 pm ·
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Fivescore
These projects are almost all residential - they didn't need to be licensed for most of them (though one of the guys did also get caught for impersonating an architect). The permits were filed by the developers and contractors, with these guys listed as the design firm. They needed civil engineering so they did it themselves and used their former employer's title block and stamp on the civil sheets. I think it would be a little impractical for an AHJ to call all consultants on all projects. On commercial projects the consultant list often takes half the cover sheet of the drawing set - it can be 20 or more companies. Multiply x number of projects.
Mar 10, 20 8:24 pm ·
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Engineering Fraud
fraud
They were former employees of the firm whose seals/signatures (and software) they were using. It's amazing that over the course of more than 10 years that they were supposedly doing this on hundreds of projects, no AHJ or contractor or anybody else ever contacted the engineering firm for any reason. I constantly have contractors trying to send submittals straight to the engineer, local fire marshals calling the engineers directly, etc.
I have frequently experienced incidents of the fire marshall calling whoever's stamp in on the particular sheet that they're looking at. On a structural or sprinkler sheet or whatever that's not the architect's stamp, it's the engineer's. Likewise, contractors pull this all the time: they think that they can negotiate changes directly with the engineers.
This sort of thing happens here on average 6-8 times per average-sized project - so in this instance, where these two were at this for at least 11 years and on 500+ projects, it's tough to believe that nobody ever once called the engineers' whose names and stamps they were using.
These guys weren't using their own names with someone else's stamp number - they were using the company name of their former employer and the names and seals of that former employer's engineers. The scam was that everybody involved believed that the former employer firm was the one involved with these projects. Your photo database won't prevent that, because it's not an issue of these fraudsters impersonating other people. It's an issue of them representing that the other firm was their consulting engineering firm when in fact they weren't involved with the projects.
And the two perps only got 1 year for this? Yikes!
Chad...that was my thought. Not long enough
How's the studying going, Rick?
The guys who were convicted had their own firm. They were using their own firm's name, but they were submitting civil drawings with the firm name of the place where they used to work, using stamps and seals of engineers from the place where they used to work. They were representing that the firm where they used to work was their consultant, but they were actually doing those "consultant" drawings themselves. That's pretty hard to catch unless somebody does contact every consultant listed in a set to verify. That's never going to happen as a matter of course on every project. But yeah, with that many projects it's surprising that nothing ever came up where somebody would have contacted the engineering firm sooner, about some issue somewhere on one of these projects.
These projects are almost all residential - they didn't need to be licensed for most of them (though one of the guys did also get caught for impersonating an architect). The permits were filed by the developers and contractors, with these guys listed as the design firm. They needed civil engineering so they did it themselves and used their former employer's title block and stamp on the civil sheets. I think it would be a little impractical for an AHJ to call all consultants on all projects. On commercial projects the consultant list often takes half the cover sheet of the drawing set - it can be 20 or more companies. Multiply x number of projects.
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