Contractor, Contracting Officer Charged in Fraud Scheme The owner of a Pennsylvania IT contractor and a Defense Department contracting officer have been charged with a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the government. The Defense Department said the inspector general’s auditors uncovered the scheme through data mining of purchase card accounts. The 68-count public corruption indictment, announced August 18 in Harrisburg, PA, focused on Kevin D. Marlowe, a former senior contracting officer at the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Defense Enterprise Computing Center in Mechanicsburg, PA. He allegedly awarded more than $11 million in federal contracts to Vector Systems Inc., a small business in Harrisburg, while he and his wife held a secret financial interest in the company. The indictments allege that he, his wife Linda Marlowe, his brother Frederick Marlowe II and his daughter Stephanie Marlowe received approximately $500,000 in cash and other benefits from Vector’s owner, Benjamin D. Share, who was also charged. Share’s attorney denied all the charges, according to the Harrisburg Patriot-News. Kevin Marlowe, 51, was suspended from his job in 2002, the U.S. attorney’s office said. He could not be reached. U.S. Attorney Thomas Marino said the federal grand jury investigation of corruption at the Mechanicsburg center is “on-going.” Separately, Linda Marlowe pleaded guilty to Social Security fraud for drawing disability benefits while she was working for Vector Systems under a false name, the indictment says. Kevin and Frederick Marlowe were also indicted in an unrelated scheme to defraud a New Jersey company where Kevin Marlowe’s nephew, James A. Kloss, was an executive. Kloss was also charged. Stephanie Marlowe pleaded guilty in that case. “It was certainly a family thing,” U.S. Attorney Marino told the Patriot-News.