A sentencing date has been scheduled for the second man who pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government while serving as a subcontractor for the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF).
Aaron Vennefron is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 1 in Columbia, S.C., according to an order last week from U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs.
Vennefron’s sentencing would come after his former partner, Phillip Thompson, was sentenced in June to 23 months of prison time, plus three years of supervised release afterward. Thompson is also ordered to pay back the money he stole.
The two men ran Ohio-based AV Security and were hired in 2010 as subcontractors for the MFFF – an unfinished Department of Energy facility intended to convert nuclear weapon-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. Under the contract, Thompson and Vennefron provided hardware materials to meet the needs of the MFFF project.
Vennefron and Thompson pleaded guilty last year to theft of $4.5 million in government funds, admitting they falsified invoices for unspecified materials they were supposed to purchase for the project. The false invoices were submitted along with real invoices for materials actually supplied to the project. The indictment does not provide details of those materials.
Both men accepted plea deals under which they avoided being sentenced on the full list of charges, which covered a total of 14 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy.
The government theft charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, three years of supervised release, and a $100 special assessment.
