Bristol Alloys

Anyone use certified material from Bristol Alloys in anything critical?

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Bristol Alloys Inc. and its president, James Bullick, admitted in court last week to selling metal that had not been heat-treated to be used in Virginia-class submarines to meet contractual requirements.

The major fraud charge dealt with parts and materials associated with Virginia-class submarines, but the Navy's investigation has also focused on Los Angeles-, Seawolf- and Ohio-class submarines, as well as the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78).

Bristol Alloys, a metal and steel parts broker, has been in business in Fairless Hills, Pa., since 2002.

Bristol Alloys created numerous fraudulent heating-test certifications supposedly issued by another company and counterfeit certified material test reports instead of complying with the Navy's requirements in the purchase orders from Garvey from about 2004 to the fall of 2009, according to court documents.

Bullick faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $5 million fine and mandatory restitution at his sentencing on Jan. 31, according to the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The company also faces a possible $5 million fine and mandatory restitution.

-- Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

Reply to
F. George McDuffee
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I wonder if detailed enough records have been kept to figure out exactly where this stuff was used, and how hard it will be to replace.

Reply to
rangerssuck

Just 10 years for this, it is shocking.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus21476

I wonder how many lives depended on the material being up to spec

Reply to
raamman

Yeah, the USSR knew how to deal with people like that!

Paul

Reply to
KD7HB

In the "old days" he would be lucky to die with any teeth still remaining. That said, they had a lot of quality problems, caused by other things, such as rushing things into production and cutting corners.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus21476

This points out two things. One is that for what most of us would consider very serious crimes the penalty is not that severe. Around my neck of the woods they send people to prison for 20 or 30 years for hooking up via the internet with underage girls for sex. So again it shows that having good lawyers makes a big difference in what kind of sentence you get.

The other thing it shows is what I have been saying for years. Business is not filled with angels, more like devils really. Everything under the sun you can think of one business or another gets caught doing it. Whether it's bribing government officials, using shoddy or second rate materials like this company did, not keeping the products clean and spreading diseases, or not keeping up maintenance on jet aircraft to save money, business is doing this kind of stuff every day. It's also just doing a bad job at what it does or is just plain criminal in its activities. When you know how bad business really is, like I do, it just makes you wonder how people can find so much fault with government. I think if you put business under the same level of scrutiny people put government under you would be shocked at what you find it doing. But business has a lot better PR than the government does.

Hawke

Reply to
Hawke

I once worked in a small start up that had a Russian technician. There was a problem with one of the written assembly procedures. As the engineer, I was showing him the new method before the new procedure was written. He was aghast. He said in the USSR if anyone deliberately deviated from the written procedure in any way, for good or bad, he would be prosecuted for sabotage. Of course in that case particular case, sticking with the old procedure until the new one was written and ECO'd would have meant building many bad assemblies that would have had to have been re-worked.

Reply to
anorton

Each and every part I have ever made for a sub has a S/N and paper trail. Makes it relatively easy to trace however it will be expensive and time consuming to replace.

Surprising to me they could get away with such a thing for an extended period of time. Even with material certs provided by suppliers we would send out random samples to a disinterested third party lab and have them inspected, verified and certified.

Reply to
noneya

With luck that means that their stuff was actually what they said it was, but they didn't do the testing and certification they were supposed to do int heir contract. From the user'r POV, a better thing, but since the sampling was random, no one could know for sure that it was ALL properly done.

Stuart

Reply to
Stuart Wheaton

That's not what the Navy says- see #3.

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Looks like they reached a plea bargain with the gov't, the company is out of business and the principal(s) will have all their personal assets stripped and spend some quality jail time.

Doesn't seem like enough. The renewal documents I just signed that allow access to certain sensitive items explicitly expose me to fines of up to $2M a _day_ and 10yrs in prison, and that's just for non-compliance, let alone premeditated criminal fraud.

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

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