Target
Stores has filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in Minneapolis under the
Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against Bridgeview based
Rose Paving Company, LCH Pavement Consultants, United Paving Company, American
Pavement Solutions, Asphalt Maintenance, Inc., and officers of several of the
named companies, claiming that the defendants conspired to defraud Target of
millions in a bid rigging and kickback scheme involving maintenance of parking
lots at 1,700 Target stores across the country. Target alleges that LCH
organized the participating paving contractors to divide up the $100 million
worth of parking lot repair work by fraudulently inflating bids, agreeing to
submit non-competitive prices on bids outside their corruptly designated
territories, and requesting bids only from contractors in on the scheme.
Target
also contends that participating paving contractors overbilled for work never
actually performed, and charged for removal and replacement of asphalt all the
way down to the substrate when the work done was only a surface overlay. The
suit says Target was billed for and paid LCH for hundreds of thousands of
dollars in work that was never done, and that LCH paid the contractors
submitting false billings and then demanded kickbacks from them.
Store
locations named in the complaint as being involved in the fraudulent billings
include Target parking lots in Cicero and Lake Zurich. Other locations
identified in the lawsuit include stores in California, Arizona, Montana,
Virginia, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia and New York. Target claims the
conspiracy began in 2009 and continued through 2012.
