Philadelphia Man Sentenced For Defrauding The City

PHILADELPHIA - Barry Jones, 67, of Philadelphia, was sentenced today to 21 months in prison for devising and executing a scheme to defraud the City of Philadelphia out of more than $1.2 million. Jones, who was charged with one count of mail fraud, was the president of Mara Management Services Inc. (“Mara”) when he knowingly submitted false bills in connection with a series of computer services contracts that Mara had entered into with City agencies.

Between July 2004 and June 2008, Mara had contracts to provide computer programming, maintenance, and consulting services to multiple agencies, including the City’s revenue and water departments, and Community Behavioral Health (“CBH”), a charitable corporation contracted by the City to provide mental health and substance abuse services for Philadelphia County Medicaid recipients. Mara hired subcontractors to perform much of the work on these contracts, repeatedly overstating the number of hours that these subcontractors worked on the projects in order to get inflated monthly payments from the City’s agencies and CBH.

Jones also overstated the number of hours that he was working on the contracted-for projects and between 2006 and 2008, he even sought and received compensation from the City for work by a subcontractor who had stopped working on the projects in 2005. In total, Jones caused the City to make payments to Mara totaling more than $5.9 million between January 1, 2005 and June 30, 2008, in connection with Mara’s contracts with the Revenue Department, the Water Department, and CBH. Jones admitted that he kept approximately $2.7 million for himself, which greatly exceeded the amount he was entitled to receive from the City.

In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Robert F. Kelly ordered Jones to pay restitution in the amount of $1.2 million and ordered three years of supervised release.

The case was investigated by the United States Postal Inspection Service and the City of Philadelphia’s Office of the Inspector General. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark B. Dubnoff.

UNITED STATES ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, EASTERN DISTRICTof PENNSYLVANIA
Suite 1250, 615 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106
PATTY HARTMAN, Media Contact, 215-861-8525