Image courtesy of army-guide.comThe owner and CEO of an armored vehicle company was sentenced Tuesday to 70 months in prison for selling armored gun trucks to the military that didn’t properly shield soldiers from bullets and blasts.
William Whyte, 72, of King City, Ontario, was sentenced in federal court in Virginia.
He was convicted after a two-week trial in October 2017.
Whyte was found guilty of three counts of major fraud against the United States, three counts of wire fraud, and three counts of criminal false claims.
He was also ordered to pay restitution of $2 million.
Whyte was indicted in 2012. Prosecutors said his company, Armet Armored Vehicles, had contracts worth $6.4 million with the U.S. Department of Defense for 32 armored vehicles.
The contracts required each vehicle to be reinforced to stop an armor-piercing bullet. Each vehicle was also supposed to have effective mine-plating protection.
The vehicles Armet provided were “deliberately under-armored,” the DOJ said.
Despite the defects, Whyte and his employees “represented that the armored gun trucks were adequately armored in accordance with the contract,” the DOJ said.
Whyte was arrested in Canada in 2016 and extradited to Roanoke, Virginia, where his company had an office.
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Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.
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