Buildings' Concrete Tests Allegedly Faked
August 4, 2011 by UPI - United Press International, Inc.
NEW YORK, Aug. 4 (UPI) — A testing lab skipped concrete-strength tests and created false reports for hundreds of New York projects, including Yankee Stadium, an indictment alleges.
Officials at American Standard Testing and Consulting Laboratories Inc., based in New Hyde Park, N.Y., “regularly skipped vital safety tests and created false reports to create the impression that the tests were performed,” the indictment said, the New York Daily News reported.
Other projects named in the indictment include the Lincoln Tunnel, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the Javits Center, the control tower at LaGuardia Airport and some Metropolitan Transportation Authority projects.
Officials at the company faked strength tests in which concrete cylinders were broken during different stages of curing and filed fake tests with engineers “who relied on the results to assess the quality of building materials in hundreds of private and public construction projects,” the indictment said.
The indictment does not indicate whether the structural soundness of any of the projects was affected, the Daily News said
The indictment charges company founder Alan Fortich and his brother Alvaro Fortich Jr., former lab directors Bruce Pumo and Sahmim Akond and former consulting engineers Michael Rabkin and Richard Kasparin.
The most serious charge each faces, enterprise corruption, carries a 25-year prison sentence on conviction.
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