Whittier Man Charged With Aerospace Bribe

A Whittier contractor has been indicted on charges that he bribed a buyer for a major aerospace manufacturer to win space shuttle contracts worth an estimated $1 million, authorities announced Friday.

In a 22-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles, Kenneth Miles Burdge, 49, is charged with paying a total of $11,500 to a buyer for the Martin Marietta Corp. for inside information allowing him to adjust his bids to obtain the lucrative shuttle contracts.

Burdge, president of Ecom Systems in Montebello and former president of Cal Pacific Fabricating in Pico Rivera, is also charged with submitting more than $240,000 in false invoices and payment requests on subcontracts he signed to build portions of the shuttle’s huge external fuel tank, including the scaffolding.

Martin Marietta holds the primary contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to build the fuel tank.

Buyer Not Charged

The buyer who allegedly received the bribes between May, 1982, and December, 1983, has not been charged in exchange for his cooperation with government prosecutors in this and several other pending cases, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Curtis B. Rappe. Rappe said two of the three subcontracts Burdge received were won with the help of the unidentified buyer.

“They basically went to the buyer and said, ‘We’ve got a feeling we may be a little bit low on our bid; can you tell us what the low bid is so we can raise ours, and we’ll split the difference with you,’ ” Rappe said.

In the first case, the buyer was allegedly promised $10,000 and received $9,000. The second bribe promised $5,000, of which half was paid, Rappe said.

Phony Requests

Government prosecutors also claim that Cal Pacific Fabricating obtained about $180,000 in payments from Martin Marietta by submitting payment requests for materials never ordered and submitted an additional $60,000 in invoices requesting payments on contracts that had been canceled.

Rappe said the false invoices came to light during a federal audit of Cal Pacific Fabricating. “In the course of that, just through good investigative techniques, we found out about the bribes,” he said.

The indictment charges Burdge with 12 counts of using travel, mail and wire transmissions to promote bribery and 10 counts of making false statements to NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy. The maximum penalty he faces is five years in prison and a fine of $10,000 on each count.