The U.S. Department of Justice is opening a U.S. Attorney’s Office branch in Richland, Wash., near the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, Vanessa Waldref, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington said Friday.
“The number of cases prosecuted by the Richland Division of my office has risen significantly over the last two decades,” Waldref said in a press release.
Federal prosecutors have handled an average of about 70 cases per year from the Tri-Cities area, Waldref added. This includes prosecution since 2005 of DOE contractors led by such companies as Bechtel, CH2M — now part of Jacobs — and HPM Corp. The DOE-related cases include fraudulent COVID-19 claims, overbilling, time card fraud or submitting false claims worth millions of dollars to the federal government.
“Many of the most significant federal cases and crimes we prosecute involve conduct in the Tri-Cities area,” which has a population of about 400,000, Waldref said.
Waldref manages 29 assistant U.S. Attorneys: 23 in Spokane and 6 in Yakima. That number will soon grow by at least two in the new Richland Office, according to the release.
