Intelli-Heart Services Inc review: Heart monitors, bouncing checks, fraud

Terrance Walker “assisted [James] Winters in securing various government contracts with the VA related to the sale of Intelli-Heart's medical supplies and services." https://casetext.com/case/walker-v-intelli-heart-servs-inc-1

IHS or “Intelli-Heart was routinely late in paying Winters his commission payments on the VA contracts he helped Winters secure. As a result, Winters was late paying Walker. (ECF No. 4, ¶ 39-53). By November 2017, the payments to Winters were approximately 120 days late. (Id.) Due to the late payments, Walker began contacting the VA and representatives of Intelli-Heart demanding payment and alleging that Intelli-Heart was engaged in various types of nefarious conduct and fraud. (Id.) Walker also threatened Intelli-Heart with litigation if his demands were not met. (Id., Exs. 9-14)”

https://casetext.com/case/walker-v-intelli-heart-servs-inc-1

The question to be resolved by the VA contracting officers was whether Walker

was a 2nd tier subcontractor under Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.232-40, if his payment was late, and if IHS had ever been late to Winters (who was late paying Walker) in violation of the FAR.

Intelli-heart communicated to four VA

contracting officers: (1) that IHS’ payments to Winters were always “timely” (SAC ¶ 72-73, Exhibit 23) even though Winters’stub shows otherwise (SAC¶ 44-45, Ex. 8), (2) that it was not connected to Walker in “any way” and (3) that Walker was simply harassing IHS. (EFC 197 pg 8, ll. 3-16) (EFC 60-1).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Chr5K79kwlCZKYPp9dArC8KX9YLY8iLS/view?usp=sharing

Though federal authorities forbade contractors like Intelli-heart from having confidentiality agreements with their workers See https://www.acquisition.gov/far/52.203-19, Intelli-heart terminated Winters in Jan. 2018 for violating a confidentiality agreement. Then, Intelli-heart pocketed $159,000 owed to Walker.

When sued by Walker, Intelli-heart indulged a cover-up their false statements about late payments, asserting they were “protected communications aimed at procuring a governmental–outcome preventing the VA from cancelling Defendant IHS's VA contracts” Walker v. Intelli-heart Servs., Inc., 2020 WL 1044010, at *6 (D. Nev. Mar 4, 2020).

This was so eye-popping that it received mass publicity on law.com See

https://www.law.com/legalnewswire/news.php?id=2958565 (“Supreme Court

Petition claims Anti-Slapp law was used to Cover-up Government Contractor's

False Statements to a Federal Agency about its Failure to Pay”, Dec 06, 2021)

However, new federal authority shows that Intelli-heart could be convicted of fraud for its statements to federal contracting officials. See U.S. v. Bazantes 978 F.3d 1227, 1248 (11th Cir 2020) (contract officer, “testified that if he had known the payroll information was false, he would have stopped paying for the work until he figured out what was going on”, affirming conviction of a government contractor under Title 18 § 1001 (a) (3) for “false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements”) Intelli-heart has apparently been late paying others, bouncing checks, and all sorts of egregious conduct as shown by a Complaint filed by Intelli-heart worker Dexter Devera. See https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wX_spL3XKZ5hG5LyXmQHYLRn2SbjsqEu/view?usp=sharing