Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in a consulting industry where the billable hours are charged to the clients. Clients are mainly public entities; Local, State and federal governments.

Last week, I came across a couple questionable timesheets entries. While digging more into it, I have found that at least three employees are cheating on billable time. For example, Employee A works on three projects between 7am and 4 pm. The time between the three projects are tracked as Project 1 - 7 am - 11 am ( 4 hrs), Project 2 - 9 am - 1 pm ( 4 hrs), and Project 3 - 12 pm to 4 pm ( 4 hrs), a cumulative total of 12 hrs. This practice is ongoing for as far back as I can track. There are hundreds of entries like this. And, These hours are eventually invoiced to the clients.

This practice seems questionable and unethical. Thoughts on what I should do?

This is odd, i have never seen timesheets tracked by what time you are working on the project, usually they track how many hours you spent on a project a day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would consider my personal responsibility in the matter-- do these individuals report to you, are you signing/reviewing timesheets, is there some other way that you should have known? For instance, in my previous job I approved travel reimbursement and I cross referenced the travel charges to the timesheet charges. (they better be charged the same project if they happened in the same timeframe!)

If any of this is yes, you should report immediately to cover yourself. If it's "no" and you went on a fishing expedition, I would be absolutely sure you are correct prior to reporting it to IG. I would in either case, but especially if I'm reporting without any direct connection/responsibility. In the second case, you could just consider finding another job or ignoring the situation since you have suspicions but no real proof. It's unethical but a route that most people would take whether they think so or not. Being a whistleblower is hard.

pp here again-- Not sure why your organization is tracking by time of day. The way I saw time cards for Federal work was amount of time and corresponding project number up to eight hours. The way we handled the fact that most people work more than eight hours was proration - 16 hours (working four hours each on 4 projects) was 2, 2, 2, 2. I was at a university though- and we couldn't add more than 8 hours a day to a timesheet even though we were exempt from OT.

Maybe in your organization all the hours worked in a day are charged, but your time sheet isn't set up for 12 hour days -the only way to show the amount of time worked on each project is to overlap. Maybe the employee worked 7-7. It seems implausible, but possible. Some university researchers routinely worked 12 hours. I'm just brainstorming because I hate starting with the premise that people are cheating.

Anonymous wrote:I would consider my personal responsibility in the matter-- do these individuals report to you, are you signing/reviewing timesheets, is there some other way that you should have known? For instance, in my previous job I approved travel reimbursement and I cross referenced the travel charges to the timesheet charges. (they better be charged the same project if they happened in the same timeframe!)

If any of this is yes, you should report immediately to cover yourself. If it's "no" and you went on a fishing expedition, I would be absolutely sure you are correct prior to reporting it to IG. I would in either case, but especially if I'm reporting without any direct connection/responsibility. In the second case, you could just consider finding another job or ignoring the situation since you have suspicions but no real proof. It's unethical but a route that most people would take whether they think so or not. Being a whistleblower is hard.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in a consulting industry where the billable hours are charged to the clients. Clients are mainly public entities; Local, State and federal governments.

Last week, I came across a couple questionable timesheets entries. While digging more into it, I have found that at least three employees are cheating on billable time. For example, Employee A works on three projects between 7am and 4 pm. The time between the three projects are tracked as Project 1 - 7 am - 11 am ( 4 hrs), Project 2 - 9 am - 1 pm ( 4 hrs), and Project 3 - 12 pm to 4 pm ( 4 hrs), a cumulative total of 12 hrs. This practice is ongoing for as far back as I can track. There are hundreds of entries like this. And, These hours are eventually invoiced to the clients.

This practice seems questionable and unethical. Thoughts on what I should do?

This is odd, i have never seen timesheets tracked by what time you are working on the project, usually they track how many hours you spent on a project a day.

Anonymous wrote:I work in a consulting industry where the billable hours are charged to the clients. Clients are mainly public entities; Local, State and federal governments.

Last week, I came across a couple questionable timesheets entries. While digging more into it, I have found that at least three employees are cheating on billable time. For example, Employee A works on three projects between 7am and 4 pm. The time between the three projects are tracked as Project 1 - 7 am - 11 am ( 4 hrs), Project 2 - 9 am - 1 pm ( 4 hrs), and Project 3 - 12 pm to 4 pm ( 4 hrs), a cumulative total of 12 hrs. This practice is ongoing for as far back as I can track. There are hundreds of entries like this. And, These hours are eventually invoiced to the clients.

This practice seems questionable and unethical. Thoughts on what I should do?

Anonymous wrote:If this is a pervasive scheme of millions of dollars of overpayments/fraud with federal dollars, you could have a qui tam claim and get significant $$$ for being a whistleblower - you get a percentage of the recovery. Look for a qui tam law firm and see if you can get a consultation and if you may have a case. If not, then refer to an OIG. (But the sole-source contracts issue sounds more like an OIG issue.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a fed project manager, I suspect this happens all the time but I have no way to approve it. This is bc the consultants are on one large IDIQ and multiple offices use it so contractor staff can be working on projects I don't even know about. I've brought it up to a few folks and they acknowledge it may exist. Honestly, the blow back from contacting the IG is more than I want to deal with and am actively looking for a new job. And this is the kind of stuff I wish DOGE would actually go after.

You reached out to IG without proof? How idiotic is that??

Anonymous wrote:Obviously you can’t be working on two projects at the same time. This is fraud plain and simple. We all multitask yes but at the end of the day you prob spend 30 min in one project 30 min in the other: this is why law firms bill in 6 min increments, to minimize these shenanigans. Unless they know how to turn back time.