A fired sales executive will spend two years in prison for staging evidence to bolster his claims of price-fixing in the oil-filter industry.
William Burch of Tulsa, Okla., doctored a letter to make it look like Champion Industries and its competitor were colluding to raise prices on oil filters. The competitor, Honeywell International,
makes Fram filters.
Burch, 53, told a judge Wednesday that he had audiotapes but needed better evidence to get a law firm to take his whistle-blower case against Champion.
The trick worked -- and then some. The 2008 whistle-blower suit he filed prompted the Justice Department to open a price-fixing probe.
Whistle-blowers can earn millions of dollars if the government backs their lawsuit and recovers large settlements for corporate wrongdoing.
Burch gave the forged letter to U.S. prosecutors in Philadelphia who opened a grand jury investigation into alleged price-fixing in the industry in 2008. And he continued to lie about it, even as questions surfaced.
Burch had added a Champion fax imprint on a letter from Honeywell announcing a price increase, and said his supervisor had gotten the letter weeks before the price hike was announced.
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"You provided the proverbial 'smoking gun'... so you could get them (lawyers) to take the case?'' U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage asked Burch. "Did you think about the people you put in
jeopardy?''
"I should have," Burch replied.
Champion had fired Burch in 2004 for alleged expense-account fraud. Two years later, he and a lawyer shopped around his price-fixing complaints to large antitrust law firms around the country. The response was lukewarm.
"I became worried that he (his lawyer) was going to drop the case and drop me. So I tried to make it better," Burch told Savage.
He must now pay $83,000 to the government for the aborted grand jury investigation, and a $30,000 fine. Savage said he was getting off lightly, since he only had to repay the Justice Department's legal costs, and not those of Champion, Honeywell and the eight people called before the grand
jury.
Burch had asked for probation, while prosecutors sought a sentence at the high end of the 21- to 27-month guideline range.
