Army brake shoes fraud and specification conflict

Ohio supplier sorted brake shoes good-on-top, bad-on-bottom to defeat sampling inspection. Criminal case failed because the drawing and procurement contract disagreed. Used to illustrate (a) the difference between meeting specs and exceeding them, and (b) what happens when specifications conflict in litigation.

I was involved in Army brake shoes, when the Army used to use Jeeps. Someone in Ohio bid on making the replacement brake shoes, and they were doing a terrible job. The government inspectors came in and said, this is unacceptable. So the company started segregating the pallets — put the good samples on top and the bad ones on the bottom, so when the Army inspectors came in they wouldn't take the time to get one from the bottom; they'd do it on top. They were missing the specifications completely. They knew it. They were hiding it from the inspectors.

One-line allusion — Tom invokes it as another example of Justice Department intervention resolving a procurement fraud. Captioner rendered as "RV brake shoes."

There are other stories — RV brake shoes, for example — where if you get a government Justice Department attorney involved, you can resolve things. Okay. I'm going to show a video, it goes for about ten minutes, on hydrogen embrittlement. Oh — Microsoft has decided it wants to do an auto update right now.