See what happens when you bring in the Feds?

From the NY Times:

Federal and local authorities arrested seven people on Tuesday — including the owners of two construction testing companies, officials from three contracting companies, and an engineer — on charges they falsified testing documents at four New York construction projects.

The people arrested were charged with mail and wire fraud, and are accused of falsifying or attempting to falsify welding, soil boring and asphalt test documents, according to criminal complaints unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn.

The charges, brought by the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn and based on work by investigators for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York City Department of Investigation, represent a growing focus on construction testing, an industry that has come under intense scrutiny in the last two years from the Manhattan district attorney’s office and other agencies.

The case was based on dozens of secretly recorded conversations between some of the defendants and an undercover investigator with the Port Authority inspector general’s office and two unidentified cooperating witnesses, officials said.

Some of those charged were recorded offering or making payoffs of several hundred dollars for the falsified testing documents, and others were recorded accepting payoffs for providing false documents, the officials said.

Some of the documents, according to the charges, were to be provided to the New York City Buildings Department to obtain certificates of occupancy. Others were to be provided to the city’s Parks Department or Housing Authority in order for the companies to be paid.