Two Florida contractor executives have been sentenced to three years in federal prison for conspiracy to defraud the government. A jury found that they created a front company to qualify for small business contracts.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Tampa said Eduardo Blanchet owned B.I.B. Consultants and Daniel Guillan was a top executive when the company was awarded a $50 million small business set-aside contract to teach foreign languages to the military’s special forces.

That contract pushed B.I.B. over its size standard, so the men set up a new company, MiLan-guages Corp., and recruited a sham owner. MiLanguages was awarded a $100 million set-aside contract to teach languages.

Evidence showed that the men submitted false documentation to conceal their ownership of MiLanguages.

As part of their sentence, they were ordered to forfeit nearly $11 million in proceeds from the contracts.

The investigation began when a competitor filed a size protest with SBA.