Lower Makefield Ripped Off In $2.1M Fraud Scheme: AG

LOWER MAKEFIELD TOWNSHIP, PA — Executives with a Bucks County engineering firm ripped off local governments, including Lower Makefield Township, by charging them for work that was never performed, according to criminal charges announced Tuesday.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office announced the charges against three former company executives of Boucher & James, a civil engineering firm headquartered in Doylestown. The charges are in connection with what prosecutors call a scheme to overbill municipalities.

The firm provides services in land planning, civil engineering, landscape architecture, surveying and building code compliance to more than 30 public entities in eastern Pennsylvania, including Lower Makefield, which was named as a victim in the case.

State prosecutors allege that Ross Boucher, the former owner of the firm who also served on its board, conspired with former managing directors Mark Eisold and David Jones to bilk municipalities out of more than $2 million between 2009 and 2018.

"These company executives took advantage of their municipal clients' trust by routinely overbilling for work that never happened," Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a news release. "Let's be clear about what this means: when you bill for time that you didn't work, you are stealing — and these former Boucher & James executives will be held accountable for their crimes."

The scheme was discovered by another managing director in 2018, who found that Eisold had handwritten additional hours into the draft invoices of his client, thereby adding employee work time billed to the client, the AG's office said. One employee was recorded as having worked 34 hours in a single day. After discovering the discrepancy, the director reviewed Eisold's other billing records and saw the same behavior, prosecutors said.

The attorney general's office opened an investigation after receiving a referral from the Northampton County District Attorney's Office, and a subsequent review by forensic accounts showed that the company's employees stole about $2.1 million from clients, authorities said.

When the company became aware of the fraud, the executives resigned from their positions, the board of directors was reconstituted and company managers cooperated fully with the investigation, the AG's Office said. Under the agreement, the company repaid more than $851,000 in overbilled funds to clients dating back to Jan. 1, 2015.

Ross Boucher, Mark Eisold, and David Jones are charged with theft by deception, theft by receiving stolen property, deceptive business practices, corrupt organizations and conspiracy. They have admitted no wrongdoing, officials said.

Patch's Peter Blanchard contributed to this report.