The Montgomery County Courthouse. (Credit: MediaNews Group)
Defendant set up a shell company and submitted phony invoices
A Montgomery County man was convicted Friday by a federal jury on 22 counts of wire fraud stemming from the misuse of his position as a federal employee in the Department of Veterans Affairs to defraud the agency of nearly $1 million over seven years.
Ahmed Hassan, 70, of Collegeville, was a supervisory engineer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia and was responsible for all mechanical and large HVAC systems at the facility, according to United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Hassan was also responsible for overseeing and implementing contracts in his area of responsibility at the medical center, Romero said in a press release.
“For his own benefit, Ahmed Hassan siphoned almost a million dollars from Philadelphia’s VA Medical Center,” Romero said. “In misusing his position to do so, he betrayed his colleagues, U.S. taxpayers, and, most egregiously, the veterans the VA serves. My office and our partners will bring to justice anyone padding their pockets like this at the federal government’s expense.”
From approximately 2013 through October 2017, Hassan schemed to defraud the VA by drafting and submitting for payment, false invoices of a company called HT Mechanical, Romero said.
Unbeknownst to Veterans Affairs Medical Center management, and in violation of Hassan’s duties to the VA, HT Mechanical was nothing but a shell that Hassan had secretly set up with his paramour, Lynn Hanrahan — a social worker with no knowledge of, or expertise in, HVAC or mechanical systems — in order to carry out the scheme, Romero said.
Hanrahan has pleaded guilty in a related scheme and is awaiting sentencing, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“For years, the defendant (Hassan) made up fake work, drafted false invoices on HT Mechanical letterhead, submitted them for payment to the VA under the VA purchase card program and lied to the VA, claiming that the work had been done when the so-called jobs did not exist, and no work was done,” Romero said. “After the VA made payment to HT Mechanical on the defendant’s say so, Hanrahan returned money to the defendant, either by check or by giving the defendant envelopes of cash.”
Hassan is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 15, 2025. He faces a maximum possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison for each count on which he was convicted.
The case was investigated by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General and the FBI and is being prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Megan Curran and Assistant United States Attorney Mary Crawley.
