A recently unsealed lawsuit accuses a former U.S. Department of Energy contractor at the Savannah River Site’s now-canceled plutonium recycling plant of filings thousands of dollars’ worth of false claims by paying out relocation packages to an employee who never actually moved.
Then, when employee Peter Michael Wanco Jr. resigned from MOX Services after allegedly being penalized for not signing off on suspect work, the company attempted to recoup the $21,000 relocation package it had given him at the start of his employment.
Wanco and the U.S. government sued MOX Services and Orano Federal Services, one of the contractor’s parent companies, on Jan. 23, 2019, in U.S. District Court of South Carolina. It is unclear why the lawsuit was kept sealed until Jan. 2 of this year.
According to the complaint, Wanco lived in Irmo, S.C., a town about 70 miles away from the 310-square-mile Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. On Dec. 19, 2016, he began working for MOX Services as a welding and mechanical quality control inspector for construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF).
Wanco had initially asked for a monthly per diem because he planned to commute each day. But Shakir Jones, a recruiter with AREVA (the former name of Orano), instead offered Wanco the relocation package,” the lawsuit says. “Jones explained that Mr. Wanco did not need to move and could ‘use the relocation package any way [he] like[d],’ because ‘[w]e don’t require proof or receipts on how you use the money. If you decide to rent a place, that would be fine,’” the federal government stated in the complaint.
According to the suit, Wanco in October 2017 attempted to revise a welding inspection plan because it provided insufficient information that would not have allowed for a thorough inspection, thereby resulting in safety and hazard issues at the MFFF. His version of the plan was eventually ignored. In March 2018, Wanco was allegedly asked to revise the accepted plan to keep it up to date on changes to the MOX project. When he refused, he was demoted to field work so he could earn a civil engineering certification, the lawsuit states:
Wanco resigned on March 26, 2018. Upon his resignation, Orano attempted to recoup the $21,000 relocation package from the former employee, according to the lawsuit.
