Ex-Executive Pleads Guilty in Navy Contract Fraud

A former executive of a United Technologies Corp. division pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to illegally obtain inside information about a Pentagon competition for a lucrative Navy contract.

Roger K. Engel, 49, a former vice president of the company’s Norden Systems division in Norwalk, Conn., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government.

Engel, who agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation of Pentagon procurement fraud called Operation Ill Wind, could receive a five-year sentence and be fined up to $250,000.

U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton in Alexandria, Va., scheduled sentencing for May 11.

Engel is the third former Norden Systems executive to plead guilty to participating in the conspiracy to obtain inside bid information about a $150-million contract to build a battlefield air traffic-control system for the Marine Corps.

A former senior vice president of Norden, James E. Rapinec, 54, and C. J. Richardson, a former marketing executive, pleaded guilty in December and are also cooperating with prosecutors.

The three men have admitted that they arranged in 1988 for Norden to pay defense consultant Thomas E. Muldoon $49,500 to get information about the Navy’s contract competition from his contacts in the Defense Department.

Muldoon was paid $27,500 before the Ill Wind investigation was disclosed in June, 1988, when FBI agents searched the offices of a number of defense contractors. Muldoon was sentenced last week to 27 months in prison in an unrelated procurement case.