Antonia Dwyer
Short Paper: Kickbacks and Bid-Rigging
Southern New Hampshire University
June 5, 2021
In 2017 a series of sweeps were made in different parts of New York by state police, in
which they investigated Bloomberg and Turners Construction. The sweep resulted in the former
Director of Global Construction at Bloomberg LLC, Anthony Guzzone pleading guilty to tax
evasion which included 1.45 million in bribes he had received for different construction jobs.
Anthony Guzzone was one of 14 people and 3 contractors, that was charged in this scheme for
stealing approximately $15 million from Bloomberg during a major renovation at the company's
New York City offices.
In this scheme these individuals would pass inside information to subcontractors to allow
them to secure bids for construction jobs. They would have the vendors overcharge and charge
for work that was not done and would take home the difference. To pay back Guzzone and his
associates for these contracts they were receiving, the subcontractors would sometimes give
cash, purchase lavish gifts for them and even perform renovations on their homes free of charge
Some measures to prevent and detect this fraud was to ask questions about the pricing
and forensic auditing. This scheme involved a lot of insiders committing crimes and giving
bribes. Anthony Guzzone was in his position for 10 years committing these crimes. If the
company would have rotated employee duties, inside and outside audits, and paid attention to the
house upgrades and lavish gifts, they may have been able to prevent it. Having the correct
safeguards up that would give the warning of over pricing could have also helped.
I am not sure that an accounting system would have prevented anything in this case. This
case involved many subcontractors. Because of so many other companies and people being
involved I feel like it would be very hard to detect this scheme early on. Maybe an accountant
that was overseeing reports was not over seeing what they was suppose to. But again with so
many other people involved I feel like it takes time to see this type of bid-rigging happening as it
is happening.