She Really Went Uphill

Martin Longman

19 years ago

Why didn’t I get rich off 9/11? Why didn’t I figure out an angle, a way to exploit the tragedy? I could have bought flags to sell. I could have invested in Kevlar.

Three years ago, Sunnye L. Sims lived in a two-bedroom apartment north of San Diego, paying $1,025 in monthly rent. Then she landed a dream job, with $5.4 million in pay for nine months of work.
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What the fuck? I’m starving here. I spent all day trying to figure out ways to keep this ship afloat. Ms. Sims suddenly landed a job that payed over 5 million dollars for nine months work? Out of the blue? How the fuck did that happen? Is she a Hollywood starlet?

Sims is not a Hollywood starlet. She is a meeting-and-events planner who built her fortune on a U.S. government contract. In 2002, her tiny company secured a no-bid subcontract to manage logistics on an urgent federal project to protect the nation’s airports in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Huh? Her tiny company, named Eclipse, landed a no-bid contract to manage logistics for our aeronautical security? It must have been quite a promising company, right? Well, no…

Eclipse came out of nowhere, starting as a one-woman operation based in Sims’s apartment. She was hired in a hurry, through word of mouth, recommended by someone who did not review her background in detail. She had worked for more than a decade as an event planner for the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. But her company, Eclipse, did not exist as a corporation until Sims got the Pearson subcontract; two weeks later, she filed incorporation papers.

You know, even I have incorporation papers. What are my chances of landing a windfall like this? I mean all of you can supply a lot of word of mouth, and apparently there is no need to review my sordid background. Am I right?

But seriously, Ms. Sims now lives in a “$1.9 million stucco mansion with lofty ceilings on a hilltop, featuring sun-splashed palm trees and a circular driveway”. She has the Transportation Security Administration to thank for that.

More on the flip:

And when I say that she has the TSA to thank, I really really mean it:

“Eclipse did not have any other work, before, during, or after the completion of this subcontract,” according to the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which was hired by the TSA to examine spending under the contract.

But she made the most of it, and so did her employees.

In addition to focusing on the direct Eclipse expenses, auditors raised concerns about expenses Eclipse employees charged to separate accounts at the hotels chosen by Pearson. Auditors highlighted scores of other expenses run up or approved by Eclipse: hundreds of thousands of dollars for valet parking, unexplained cash advances, dry cleaning and other spending at the hotels, many of which were high-end or resort-style establishments.

[snip]

The auditors said $15 million in expenses submitted by Eclipse could not be substantiated. For example, auditors were able to find supporting documents for only $326,873 of the $5.8 million that Eclipse spent directly on accounting, administration, consulting, management and contract labor.

The auditors noted that Sims not only paid herself $5.4 million in compensation as “President/Owner” but also that she gave herself a $270,000 pension.

Holy Crap. This lady’s company loses money faster than the Federal Government. And where does she get off paying herself $5.4 mil?

Well, maybe because her little company got a lot of work:

Sims, now 42, recruited hundreds of people to help hire a government force of 60,000 airline passenger screeners on a tight deadline. With little experience, her tiny company was asked to help set up and run screener-assessment centers in a hurry at more than 150 hotels and other facilities. Her company eventually billed $24 million.

The company, Eclipse Events Inc., was among the most important of the 168 subcontractors hired by prime contractor NCS Pearson Inc. The cost of the overall contract rose in less than a year to $741 million from $104 million, and federal auditors concluded that $303 million of that spending was unsubstantiated.

Are you writing all this down? Does it compute?

Let’s review.

A women living in a $1,000/month apartment, working as an event planner at the Four Seasons Hotel, receives a no-bid subcontract from the Federal Government that pays her $24 million dollars. Her job is to develop a nationwide recruitment and assessment system for passenger screeners at our airports. The woman was working out of her basement and didn’t form a corporation until two weeks after she received the subcontract.

Her company can’t account for 15 million dollars that she claimed as expenses.

But don’t worry:

Her friends dismissed the possibility of impropriety, saying she and Sullivan are both devout Christians who would never take advantage of the government for personal gain.

We’ve never been so safe and so well led. Freedom is on the march.

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