‘BRAZEN FRAUD’

Federal Contractor Charged in Massive Bid-Rigging Scheme

Sina Moayedi stands accused of bribing a State Department insider to help him win more than $100 million in government contracts.

A construction company owner in Maryland was arrested Friday on charges that he paid a State Department insider tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for confidential information that illegally won him contracts worth more than $100 million, prosecutors announced. Sina Moayedi, the founder and principal owner of Mosaic, Inc., now faces two counts of wire fraud and one count of bribery of a public official. For many years, Montage has performed work for the federal government, including the Department of Defense, the FBI, NASA, and the State Department. The State Department employee accused of assisting Moayedi in his alleged scheme is named in the complaint against him only as “Insider-1.” However, a search warrant affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast identifies her as 65-year-old May Salehi, who is assigned to the State Department’s division of Overseas Buildings Operations.

The feds believe Salehi agreed to participate in Moayedi’s alleged fraud so she could work her way out from under a mountain of debt, steering large-scale infrastructure projects to Mosaic as part of a “multifaceted fraud scheme” that spanned several years and at least half a dozen countries.