Five companies have agreed to pay more than $800,000 to settle charges that they made false claims under the Transportation Department’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program.

The U.S. attorney in Wichita, KS, said the companies falsely claimed that a minority contractor, A.G.W. Steel Inc. of Decatur, IL, was a supplier on paving contracts.

A.G.W. Steel and its owners agreed to pay $50,000 and withdraw from the DBE program for three years.

Koss Construction Co. and Koss Materials Co. LLC of Topeka, KS, will pay $600,000. Carter-Waters Corp. of Kansas City, MO, will pay $176,000 and Ideker Inc. of St. Joseph, MO, will pay $22,000.

None of the companies admitted any wrongdoing.

Two defense contractors and a Baltimore businessman have been charged with a conspiracy to rig bids on military fuel contracts.

The Justice Department alleged that Matthew Bittenbender, a contract manager for a Maryland fuel company, sold his employer’s confidential bid information to two competitors.

An indictment unsealed in Baltimore federal court charges that two Americans living in Prague, Christopher Cartwright and Paul Wilkinson, paid Bittenbender for the information and won contracts as a result.

The three are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Cascades Technologies, an 8(a) firm, has won a $3.5 million contract to manage USA.gov, the government’s official Web portal, for the next five years.

GSA said Cascades, of Herndon, VA, will provide content management, accessibility compliance, usability assistance, optimization services and project management support for USA.gov and its Spanish-language counterpart, GobiernoUSA.gov.

Deidre Lee, chief acquisition officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will retire from government service in March, Federal Computer Week reported.

Lee has served in the highest-profile contracting jobs, including administrator of federal procurement policy and director of defense procurement. She has spent 32 years in government.

Fay Ott was named SBA associate administrator for government contracting and business development.

She will oversee the 8(a) program and other contracting initiatives. She succeeds Paul Hsu, who served in the job for less than a year.

Ott has been with SBA since 2004, most recently as a senior adviser.

SBA is considering a request to waive the nonmanufacturer rule for All Other Miscellaneous Electrical Equipment and Component Manufacturing, NAICS code 335999, product number (6250). The agency believes no small business is currently supplying the products to the government.

Comments are due Jan. 14.