Los Angeles Times: Fraud Charged in Sales to Military

(you must reg/login to see story)
[url]http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-chopper25jul25.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dcalifornia[/url]

LOS ANGELES
Fraud Charged in Sales to Military
Sun Valley: Firm and its owner are accused of providing Army and Air Force with
faulty rotor pins for helicopters.
By DAVID ROSENZWEIG
TIMES STAFF WRITER

July 25 2002

A Sun Valley company and its owner have been indicted on charges of selling the
Army and Air Force substandard rotor pins for the workhorse UH-60 helicopter,
which resulted in the temporary grounding of the fleet used to ferry troops and
supplies into battle, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Jack Harootunian, 48, of Glendale faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted,
and his company, Apex Manufacturing Inc., could be fined $1 million.

The problem came to light in 2000 when an Army medical unit in Hawaii reported
that many of the pins in its UH-60 Blackhawk choppers were failing flight
inspections because of corrosion and cracking. Assistant U.S. Atty. Christine
Adams, who is prosecuting the fraud case, said that no crashes or mishaps
occurred because of any faulty pins.

Nevertheless, the two armed services were forced to ground their entire fleet of
Sikorsky-built UH-60s for inspection so that Apex-supplied pins could be
replaced, she said.

Harootunian's attorney, Donald Etra, said the criminal charges are unfounded.

"All parts delivered to the government were believed to conform explicitly to
specifications," he said. "The documents from the company verify this."

Etra said the military has shown its "full faith" in Harootunian by continuing
to buy the same type of rotor pins from his company.

The pins are used to secure the helicopter's four rotor blades to the main
rotor.

Under its contract with the military, Apex was required to subject the pins to
very high temperatures for sustained time periods, a process that increases
hardness and resistance to corrosion.

The indictment charged that in July 1998, Harootunian shipped 3,467 rotor pins
to the military without disclosing that an aluminum alloy component had not been
heat-treated according to contract specifications.

He also was accused of shipping another 130 substandard pins to the military in
September 1998.

-- continued --

When confronted about the problem two years later, the indictment said,
Harootunian responded with a letter falsely claiming that the pins had been
"tested and accepted per customer requirements."

Apex Manufacturing was located in North Hollywood at the time the alleged
offenses were committed. It now employs 14 people at its Sun Valley plant.

The UH-60 was designed to carry a crew of three and 11 troops or about 9,000
pounds of cargo. It can be modified for medevac or reconnaissance missions.

Since it introduced the aircraft in 1978, Sikorsky has built and sold about
2,500 of the choppers to all of the U.S. armed services and to American allies
around the world. The Army has about 1,600 in its fleet.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at
latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article, go to
www.lats.com/rights.

Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times

Wonderful. Will be looking very close at the blade pins this weekend before flying I guess...


Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

We always had technical bulletins coming in for UH-1 and UH-60 hardware not conforming to the manufacturing specs. Its a much bigger problem than you can imagine. Black marketed hardware also sneaks into the military inventories, especially overseas. I have found a lot of hardware that did not meet the required heat treating processes and hardness tests. I have also found some hardware that did not get heat treated at all. That is some pretty damn scary shit on the rotating parts of a rotary wing aircraft.