The Wackenhut Corp. overbilled Miami-Dade County as much as $6 million over three years for phantom security guards at county transit stations, according to a long-awaited audit released Thursday.
County auditor Cathy Jackson -- who reviewed a sample of the bills -- found that Wackenhut, one of the country's largest security firms, routinely charged the county for empty guard posts at Metrorail stations and along bus routes, and relied on inaccurate and falsified records to try to cover up the overbilling.
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez has given Wackenhut 90 days to repay the county or rebut the audit findings or he will cancel the company's no-bid contract, along with a separate Wackenhut contract for guards at a juvenile detention center.
Jackson said Wackenhut should also pay the county an additional $233,000 for violating the terms of its contract. Wackenhut's billing is also being examined by public-corruption detectives with the Miami-Dade Police Department.
''There is no disputing that [Miami-Dade Transit] was billed for hours not worked by Wackenhut security officers, which is a very serious offense,'' County Manager George Burgess wrote in a memo to Alvarez.
Wackenhut, however, does dispute the audit. The company says Jackson used unreliable records to determine that posts were uncovered, and ignored other records that could prove guards were on duty.
FIGURES DISPUTED
While Wackenhut says it will reimburse the county for any ''substantiated billing errors,'' the company says Jackson's conclusion of $6 million in overbilling from 2002 to 2005 is an exaggerated estimate based on a small sample.
''If you start with a false premise, you end up with a false conclusion,'' said Bruce Rubin, a company spokesman. ``We respectfully but forcefully disagree with the auditor's methodology.''
Jackson based her estimate on a review of 505 billing records -- only .25 percent of the bills submitted in the three years studied -- which found $14,722 in questionable charges. She also found $83,665 in suspicious charges, but these were not included in her sample for estimation purposes.
Wackenhut has been providing security for Miami-Dade Transit since 1989, and the contract has been awarded without bidding since 1994. The current contract, which pays Wackenhut as much as $17 million a year, is set to expire in November 2009.
The security company, based in Palm Beach Gardens, has also spent the past three years fending off an unusual lawsuit brought by a former guard at the county's Juvenile Assessment Center, who accused her former employer of padding its bill to the county.
The former guard's attorney, H. Mark Vieth, has said he believes the overbilling could be as much as $3.6 million a year. He has compiled sworn statements from ex-guards who said they struggled to fill unmanned posts, submitted false records and received pay for hours they didn't work.
Jackson ''found exactly what we've been telling the county for a while now,'' Vieth said. ''I could have practically written that report for her. The only difference, really, is that we're auditing 100 percent of the bills and she's found this much fraud'' based on a far smaller sample.
Wackenhut has denied wrongdoing in the suit and has challenged Vieth to provide proof of specific instances of overbilling.
Vieth has enlisted a team of investigators and bookkeepers to sort through Wackenhut bills, sign-in sheets, log books and other records to prove his case, which is not yet scheduled for trial. If he wins the case -- brought under the county's False Claims Act -- his client will receive 25 percent of any damages and the county will receive 75 percent.
REFUSED TO TESTIFY
Yet the lawsuit has put Vieth at odds with the county. Last month he sought a contempt of court order against Jackson after she refused to testify about the audit before it was completed. Vieth plans to call her again for a deposition next week.
The audit was costly to Wackenhut even before its release. The company had been selected by county staffers to win another $4.8 million county security contract -- before county commissioners, worried about the audit findings, decided Tuesday to scrap the bids and start over.
In her audit, Jackson said Wackenhut constantly shifted guards around to cover unguarded posts, pulling in supervisors or patrols from the bus routes, but the county was billed as though all these jobs were filled.
In some cases, log books at Metrorail stations contained no notes to prove a guard was there, the audit found. In other cases, the logs and other records showed guards in two different locations at the same time.
Records showed that one armed guard was on duty for 34 ½ hours in a row -- violating a rule capping guards at 13 ½ hours in a 24-hour period and ''leaving in question the ability of armed employees to remain alert and responsive,'' the audit said.
Wackenhut officials said the log books were never intended to be used for timekeeping, and said the absence of notes in the books do not prove a guard wasn't on duty.
