(Part I) Use the Strike Force: Daniel Glad, Director of the Procurement Collusion Strike Force, Department of Justice

Guest Host, Megan Smyth (Director of Legal Education and Sr. Legal Counsel at NASPO) Joins the Pulse to speak with Daniel Glad, Director of the Procurement Collusion Strike Force, Department of Justice. Daniel explains the origins and mission of the PCSF, its role in combating collusion in procurement, and the importance of the Sherman Act. Stay tuned for Part II!

Click here to view a transcript of this episode.

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Transcript

Kevin Minor:  0:04

Greetings and welcome to another episode of the NASPO Pulse, your go-to source for all things state procurement. I'm your host, Kevin Miner, and today we have a very special guest host, my friend and friend of the pod, Director of Legal Education for NASPO, Megan Smith. Megan, how are you today?

Megan Smyth:  0:26

I'm doing great, kevin. I'm excited that it is spring, but I am sneezing my way through it spring has sprung.

Kevin Minor:  0:33

Megan, how does it feel to be on the other side of the podcast hosting?

Megan Smyth:  0:37

well, I feel like I've worked my way up you have, you earned this to to second guest, to host, and next I'm coming for you. I'm coming for your job.

Kevin Minor:  0:50

Bring it on, I'm ready, I'm ready. Josh's seat is pretty comfortable, though the view from down there it is.

Megan Smyth:  0:58

I'm keeping it warm for you, Josh.

Kevin Minor:  1:00

So, Megan, there is a reason that you are, besides the fact that you are just wonderful and great in all ways. There is a reason that we have you as the guest host today. Today, Megan, we are talking with Daniel Glad and he is the director of the Procurement Collusion Strike Force with the Department of Justice. And, Megan, we're going to be talking with Daniel about what the PCSF or the strike force is, the ultimate mission of the strike force. And, Megan, what else are we going to be talking with Dan about?

Megan Smyth:  1:37

Well, dan is I would call him a friend of NASPO at this point. He's attended several of our conferences and presented to our members and he is an amazing resource and he's going to share with our members and our listeners what they can look for in their everyday jobs that might reveal collusion or fraud or inappropriate business practices among and between suppliers and vendors.

Kevin Minor:  2:03

And really, dan is just a treasure trove of knowledge and I really, really enjoyed speaking with him today and we we enjoyed speaking with him so much that this episode, the recording, ran so long that we're actually going to break this up into two parts, but I think it's important that we do that to get all of the information out there to our listeners about how they can detect this collusion and start to understand better these conspiracies, right, megan?

Megan Smyth:  2:32

Absolutely. And if you love true crime, if your podcast list is full of true crime podcasts, we have got some true white collar crime.

Kevin Minor:  2:41

for you, today, the pulse goes true crime.

Megan Smyth:  2:45

Yep, and we could fill in a whole episode, a series of episodes really, of Dan telling his war stories.

Kevin Minor:  2:51

Yes, yes, Dan gives us case examples as well as his interpretation of some of the different acts that he has to function under, and with that we've got even more exciting episodes in store for you in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to us NASPO Pulse Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcast. Never miss an episode. But for now, sit back, relax.

Megan Smyth: 3:16 And let's take the pulse.

Kevin Minor:  3:17

Yeah, Dan. Thank you so much for joining us today. How are you?

Daniel Glad:  3:21

I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Kevin Minor:  3:30

It's a real pleasure to be on the podcast. Absolutely. We're so glad that you're here, Dan. You are the director of the Procurement Collusion Strike Force. Before we get started, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself and how you came into this role?

Daniel Glad:  3:39

Sure, so I started. So the Procurement Collusion Strike Force is part of the US Department of Justice and I started at the Department of Justice as a line prosecutor as a federal prosecutor and honestly in my heart I still think of myself as just a person on the line working with agents enforcing the law. I started in our Chicago office. I spent some time in the US Attorney's Office in Chicago as well Chicago's my hometown working on a variety of criminal offenses. I eventually became one of the assistant chiefs in our Chicago office and then, about three years ago, was made the director of the PCSF, the Procurement Inclusion Strike Force, or the Strike Force it's a mouthful, so we can just call it the Strike Force.

Daniel Glad:  4:24

Before I joined the Department of Justice, the Procurement Collusion Strike Force, or the Strike Force it's a mouthful, so we can just call it the Strike Force. Before I joined the Department of Justice, I was the Assistant Inspector General for the City of Chicago. That is an office dedicated to rooting out fraud, waste and corruption in the City of Chicago's government, and if you know anything about my hometown, that was a very busy job, and before that I spent several years in private practice.

Megan Smyth:  4:47

We know you're from Chicago because of the way you say.

Kevin Minor: 4:49 Chicago. Yeah, that's what.

Daniel Glad:  4:51

I was going to say you know, if you mean I say it properly, then that's correct. I mean I also have Megan really strongly held views on hot dog toppings, which we could really make the topic of today's episode, if you'd like.

Kevin Minor:  5:05

You know, I think that's a whole nother podcast. I will say unapologetically that Chicago Deep Dish is my favorite pizza.

Daniel Glad:  5:12

Wow. Well, here's a life tip, or a life hack. Chicago Deep Dish is one of two styles of pizza. And there's another style it's the thin crust, and it's a very crisp crust and it's cut into small squares. And that is when you're a kid, and when you, your parents, go out for pizza on a Friday night, they're not going to Little Caesars because they have a lot of kids. They're getting that more crisp square cut and it's it's. I love them both. They're both. They're both equally worthy. So next next trip up to Chicago, kevin, I'll have some suggestions for you.

Kevin Minor:  5:47

Absolutely Well, folks. Thanks for listening today. I think we got everything that we needed. That was really the most important part. So, dan, can you tell us a little bit more about the Procurement Collusion Strike Force or the I'm sorry we're going to call this the PCSF?

Megan Smyth:  6:03

We can call it the PCSF or just the Strike Force I know it's a I like calling it the Strike Force, because that sounds cool.

Kevin Minor:  6:08

It does sound cool, so I think we should do Okay, well for the remainder of this episode, we'll refer to it as the Strike Force. Dan, can you tell us just a little bit more about the Strike Force? How did it come to exist?

Daniel Glad:  6:20

Yeah, so the Strike Force is the Department of Justice's coordinated national and interagency response to antitrust crimes and other schemes and crimes that impact government procurement, and that's procurement at all levels federal. The the strike force came about because years of experience here at the department of justice as investigators and prosecutors has taught us that when the government goes into the market to buy goods, to buy services to meet its mission for for the people building roads, sidewalks, installing water mains, uh purchasing, purchasing sundries for for welcome areas at a state rest stops we know from our experience that those purchases are targeted by criminal conspiracies. That helped inform why we started the Strike Force. We also know from some recent experience that when various prosecuting offices and various law enforcement agencies work together in true cooperation we can achieve some pretty amazing outcomes for the government in terms of enforcing the law, deterring future criminal conduct and, really importantly, making the government agency victims whole through restitution. So that is sort that that is sort of the basis of the strike force.

Megan Smyth:  7:47

Dan, I'm really excited that you could join us today in this podcast format, because you have joined NASPO before and you presented at our law Institute I think two years.

Megan Smyth:  7:59

And I know that our attorneys and CPOs who were in attendance really benefited from your tips and tricks and learning that this strike force exists. So that was very informative and useful. And I noticed in the materials that you sent over that one of your all's main goals is deterrence, and I think we lawyers hear a lot about deterrence, and mostly in the criminal realm, and I think most of us have an idea that it doesn't work necessarily as well as we would like. How do you think that your strike force has actually worked to deter this kind of crime, as opposed to just snuffing it out, right?

Daniel Glad:  8:42

So deterrence is one of those things that's really hard to measure, right? I think the lawyerly way of saying it it's the counterfactual hypothetical which is a phrase only a lawyer can come up with right.

Megan Smyth: 8:57 That's a $10 scrabble word.

Daniel Glad:  8:58

You're trying to measure what did not happen, and that is really a very difficult thing to do.

Daniel Glad:  9:05

So while I can talk and I'm happy to talk about the number of investigations, we have some of our successes, some of our successes at trial the thing I always think about first is how much money we can potentially save the government agencies that are buying goods and services and, ultimately, the taxpayers. You know who I work for, and there's a really interesting study done by an international non-governmental organization called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD. And what the OECD did is they looked at government spending across the world on goods and services and they did an analysis. And the OECD has determined that the cost of bid rigging, price fixing and other forms of collusion at the outset of procurement and I want to be clear we're not talking about public corruption, we're not talking about cost overruns, we're not talking about all the things that happened during the performance of the contract, we're talking about at the awarding of the contract the cost of these criminal schemes is 20%, 20% collusion tax.

Megan Smyth: 10:19 That's a lot.

Daniel Glad:  10:20

I assume most of your listeners are involved in the procurement in the various states. I would encourage them to think about what 20% of their bottom line budget, what they could do, whether it's lane miles paved or school lunches provided or whatever the various things the states are buying. Think about what you could do with 20% and this collusion tax. It's imposed by criminal conspirators operating in secret and these conspiracies spread in time. They spread in effect.

Daniel Glad:  10:59

One thing we know here at the Department of Justice is that generally those who are colluding, when they sell the government, don't do it just on one contract, they don't do it just to one agency. People are inclined to engage in this criminal conduct and they see that it's effective. It will continue. And there's this great quote and it's not my quote, it's a quote from a judge who wrote an opinion for the 11th Circuit last year and it's it's true. It's true in my experience. The quote is quote like bears to honey, white collar criminals are drawn to billion dollar government programs. Diabolical, that's great. You know, I miss Scalia for those little catty remarks in his opinion.

Megan Smyth: 12:01 Whether you agree with.

Daniel Glad:  12:03

Justice Scalia's political orientation or his jurisprudential way of doing things.

Daniel Glad:  12:10

I don't think any fair-minded reader can say the man did not have a way with words, um oh yeah, he taught, he came in my law school, uh, for for like three days, and he caught a con law class and he he walks in with, flanked by his security details, deputy united states marshals, or maybe it's court police, I don't know and he has, walks up, takes the podium and unfurls this big sheet of paper and, with the light shining through, and what we can see is that it's a seating chart. And if you've been to law school, especially classes there are Socratic method where you're called on and he looks, he looks and he's looking at it and this like devilish little smirk crosses his face and he says, uh, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna cold call anyone today, um, and then just starts a lecture about I think it was outstanding. It was like some very, very technical, very technical legal topic, but you could. What you could hear were like a hundred the, the sound of a hundred souls trying to gasp.

Kevin Minor: 13:15 Oh, God, the thought of.

Daniel Glad:  13:17

Scalia, cold calling you and doing the Socratic on you. Ooh.

Megan Smyth: 13:21 Yeah, no, did he ever cold?

Daniel Glad:  13:24

call you. No, so he didn't cold. It was a little bit of a joke, you know, he didn't cold call, he just gave lecture and then he would take questions and he would engage with students. But he didn't cold call, he didn't say Mr Minor, please rise and state the anti-crime standing rule and then engage you in seven minutes of torture, which would be the way an old school professor would do it. Sure.

Kevin Minor:  13:50

I'd be looking around for Mr Minor. He's not here today. I don't know how that is. That's a great story.

Megan Smyth:  14:02

Yeah, awesome, okay, well, so so we talked about one of your ultimate missions and your, which is to deter and out, do outreach and training, which we'll get to the outreach and training part in our in our second discussion here, which we'll get to the outreach and training part in our second discussion here, because we want to share what you can do with our procurement officials and stay tuned, guys, because we got good news for you and so let's talk about the second goal that you have, which is facilitating the effective detection, investigation and prosecution of those kind of crimes. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Kevin Minor:  14:37

Sure and explain for some of our less legal literate listeners what exactly that is.

Daniel Glad:  14:44

What exactly the detection is or what the crimes are. Both, both Okay. So this is that's a couple of big questions that we have some big answers At any point. Kevin and Megan, stop me to reorient, I might go off. So you're right, one of our key missions, megan, is to deter this conduct. The goal of any criminal prosecutor is to deter crime to zero and put themselves out of a job. I mean, that would be my goal.

Kevin Minor:  15:16

Interesting way to look at it. Well, I mean, that would be my goal Interesting way to look at it.

Daniel Glad:  15:18

Well, I mean, that is actually the goal. It's not a realistic goal, but we still set sort of stretch goals. So we do the deterrence. Failing that, you know, a great political philosopher said men are no angels. Failing that, because men are no angels, we are looking to amplify the detection, investigation and prosecution of these schemes and a big part of that is our interagency approach and our whole of government approach to these problems.

Daniel Glad:  15:53

The PCSF is a partnership with the Department of Justice and the Antitrust Division which manages it. 22 US Attorney's Offices around the United States. So you have the prosecutors in individual jurisdictions and agents from at least from our 11 national partner law enforcement agencies so think the FBI, offices of Inspector General working together. And then in each of our individual districts, each of our individual squads, there may be additional agencies present, state, local and federal, based upon the composition of the district. What the spending looks like?

To give you an example of the district, what the spending looks like, to give you an example, in my hometown of Chicago there's basically no federal land, so our squad there sort of reflects that In Denver. However, a significant portion of the state of Colorado is federal land managed by the Department of Interior, its various bureaus and agencies. So in Denver, which is a real success story for the work we've done there, our Denver squad has a significant contribution from the Department of Interior, oig, and that's one of the things that's very exciting about this.

Daniel Glad:  17:07

A lot of times in government and I think this is true for the state, it's certainly true for the federal government you'll have sort of a top-down. Here's how it's going to work. Just please go execute it. We have some of that. There's an overall strategy, but in each of the teams, each of the 22 teams or squads, they're able to sort of work, create the composition that makes sense for the conditions on the ground, which I think is one of the really powerful things about the strike force. So with those teams they're working together to identify high-risk areas, to intake complaints, tips and leads from the public, from federal agents, from procurement officials very relevant to today's discussion to use data analytics and when we detect some indicators that crime is afoot, we'll open an investigation and then we'll eventually do a prosecution. So that's at the high level. I think that gets to the first question.

Megan Smyth:  18:10

Can I stop you for a second and ask you a little bit for our non-attorney listeners about jurisdiction here? So you are part of the federal government which has jurisdiction over all federal contracting and things of that nature. When would a state situation fall under your jurisdiction as a federal?

Daniel Glad:  18:31

prosecutor. So there's a couple of different ways and we can kind of get into the law part of this. One clear before we sort of get into the law. One cleared way where the where the federal government will have jurisdiction is if there's any federal funds, the mission fulfillment is, if it's USDOT funds to build lane miles or it's the Department of Energy providing grants to the states to build out grid resilience, the electrical grid resiliency, federal funds can be our jurisdictional book and we would be looking for that for a particular branch of crime, sort of the traditional fraud, false statement, obstruction of a government proceeding. There's a second suite of laws which are really at the heart of what the antitrust division at DOJ does the Sherman Antitrust Act, and there the jurisdiction is universal. The Sherman Antitrust Act which criminalizes a few different trances of conduct which we can go into.

Daniel Glad:  19:40

It applies to the economy as a whole, it applies to every single part of the economy and that's really because it comes from a place of sort of protecting the fundamental economic policy of the United States. That fundamental economic policy of the United States is competition, competition in a free market. Why do we have that? Because competition in a free market. It benefits American consumers Lower prices, better, better quality, greater choice, material progress. It provides the opportunity to compete on a on a pricing quality, on a level playing field unhampered by competitive restraints. And it comes out of the sherman act, comes out of from 1890. So it's one hundred and thirty three years old and an oldie, but an oldie but a goodie?

Daniel Glad:  20:39

Yeah, only classics. And it comes from a time when there was a lot of concentration and where there was a real fear that we did not have a free market, that we did not have a fair competition. In the United States we call it antitrust. In the rest of the world they call it anti-competition, they call it competition law. We call it antitrust because it goes back to the days of the trust, the big trust, the Rockefeller Trust, standard Oil, the Sugar Trust. This is really at the bedrock of our, of our economy. It's Teddy Roosevelt trying to trying to break up these sort of almost like octopus, like entities, right, and so that's. You know, that is sort of the animating purpose and why it applies everywhere. And maybe now, megan Kevin, is a time to sort of like get into the law, like what do we actually talk about when we talk about an antitrust violation? Is that, does that make sense?

Megan Smyth:  21:43

Yeah, sure. So why don't? Why don't I ask you this way? Maybe this will help. When we talk about OK, we've all played Monopoly, right, everybody's played Monopoly and we have all heard of monopolies, and we hear about this a lot in the tech industry with the hearings in front of Congress, and when someone wants to merge, we hear about that. But that can be applied in the regular old business world right. Where it's not, we're not on the news. We have companies who may be taking a monopoly in a non flashy area. Could you talk a little bit about that?

What a monopoly really means in practice?

Daniel Glad:  22:25

So monopoly? So a monopoly to a lawyer, in particular to a lawyer who practices in this area, has a very, very specific meaning and a very, very specific legal meaning very, very specific meeting and a very, very specific legal meeting. I think when people would, when, when most people use the word monopoly when they're sitting around the dining room table playing the board game or, as often happened in my case in my house, not playing the board game because someone got angry at someone else for trying to cheat Yep, do not pass, do?

Megan Smyth: 22:53 not pass.

Daniel Glad: 22:54 Do not pass go.

Megan Smyth:  22:55

Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

Daniel Glad:  22:58

Pull it flipped over Straight to jail. Somehow the top hat piece is in another room Straight to jail.

Daniel Glad:  23:06

What we're really talking about is sort of efforts to tilt the playing board, to tilt the pinball machine in an unfair way, to affect competition, to get something greater, a greater piece of the pie than you're entitled to. And so that's what the Sherman Act, the Sherman Act of 1890, is designed to address. And there are two sections to the Sherman Act, section 1 and Section 2. Section 1 deals with what lawyers call per se offenses, meaning they are in and of themselves so wrong, so harmful and so devoid of any reason for existing but for crime that they are strictly prohibited. And these are conspiracy crimes. They're agreements between two or more competitors who have a meeting of the minds or a mutual understanding.

Daniel Glad:  23:59

And I can't stress enough the agreement here is the crime, and it's usually it's an agreement to do one or more of three things. The first will be price fixing. This is where competitors get together to work, set prices in the it's always going to be in secret, um, and it's not the case where sort of the two gas stations on the corner are like looking at each other's publicly to say prices and like playing off each other to try to get more business. That's competition at work. Uh, when we're talking about our getting together in secret to say today, today, a gallon of this commodity is going to be this price.

Megan Smyth:  24:38

Right and that is antithetical to an open market.

Daniel Glad:  24:40

Absolutely. I mean, it's not. It's not open, it's not a marketplace, it's a secret cabal and you'll see price fixing across across the economy. We have over the 133 years of enforcement.

Kevin Minor:  24:52

Yeah, I was going to ask really just quickly. I'm very curious Does that happen more often than one may think?

Daniel Glad: 25:01 Yes, it does.

Daniel Glad:  25:03

I think, based on our experience, price fixing and then bid rigging, which is the next one I'll get to happen across the economy in almost every industry, more difficult to detect than, say, a drug trafficking organization where there's going to be some public display of some parts of the organization, whether it's the hand-to-hand narcotics transactions or the transport of narcotics across the United States where someone might be speeding and be detected by a state trooper. Here these things are happening in secret and they can be difficult to detect. Here these things are happening in secret and they can be difficult to detect. So we've developed some tools over the years to try to increase that detection, because certainty of detection comes into play in the decision to engage in this conduct, because these are rational calculations, because you're deciding to commit a, to commit a crime and often, time and time again, there's no such thing as a price fixing crime of passion. It does not happen with hot blood. Remember, megan, in law school they talk about the hot blood. That's not what price fixing is. These are, these are premeditated.

Daniel Glad:  26:20

Yeah, these are premeditated, and so if we can and we can talk about some of those tools these are premeditated, interesting, and we can talk about some of those tools. If we can use some of those tools to increase the certainty of detection, it can help impact that likelihood or impact the decision to engage in the conduct, to commit the crime or to continue the crime, if you're already kind of into it. So we've talked about price fixing, kevin. There's another one that I think is really relevant for your folks, your audience, and that's bid rigging. Um, so much of government procurement, so much of government purchasing happens through some kind of bidding process.

And what bid rigging is? It's? It's essentially competitors getting together in advance and deciding. They're deciding, not your contract officers. The competitors are deciding who's going to win um, and it allows them to accomplish their desired outcome, and they do it a few different ways. There's bid rotation or allocation, so we take turns. So today it's mine, next month, kevin, you're going to get the contract, and the month after that, megan, you're going to get the contract, and we're all going to fill in our bid sheets to make sure that we do that.

Daniel Glad:  27:24

We can also submit what are called complimentary bids or comp bids or dummy bids. And that's where I call Megan up and say Megan, I really need some help. I need to get this highway contract for whatever. I'm coming in at a hundred dollars, a hundred dollars per unit, I need you to come in at $103. And so Megan puts in a comp bid or a dummy bid that gives the appearance of competition, ensures that I win.

Daniel Glad:  27:55

Another way it can happen is through bid suppression or bid limitation. And that's when I call Kevin up and say Kevin, I need this job and I need you to lay off. I need to lay off the bid. I need you to not put a number in because I need to win and maybe I'll get you on the next one. So now we have bid limitation or bid suppression. It also has a little bit of rotation as well, and that is going to be, you know. Going back to your earlier question, kevin. You know, is this more common than we think? This is very, very common. It goes back to your earlier question, kevin. You know how is this more common than we think? This is very, very common.

Megan Smyth:  28:28

It goes back to that 20 collusion tax right. And you, you said something, dan, at the first law institute you presented. That stuck with me ever since and it's probably because it it appeals to my already paranoid sense of things. But you said, every conspiracy starts with a conversation.

Daniel Glad:  28:45

It's true, especially these kind of conspiracies, and whenever there are points of contact between competitors, that's an opportunity that provides the opportunity for these sorts of conspiracies to develop. I think we talked about the Law Institute and I asked folks, what did you do last night at the hotel bar? You met people from the similar line of work and maybe you talked about weather. Hopefully you didn't talk about politics. Maybe you talked about sports. After a few minutes, you start talking about what you have in common and it's the work. And it's the same whether you're a state procurement official attending an ASPO conference or if you work in a major in the private sector, in a major industry attending a conference.

Daniel Glad:  29:34

You start talking about business. You start talking about boy, they're really beating us up on price. Yeah, it's been really hard. I don't know if we're gonna be able to keep the same market share. Yeah, same here, same here, same here. Maybe you have one more drink. Maybe that drink learned leads into another. Maybe one of you says I wish there was something we could do about it and it can happen. It can happen like that.

Kevin Minor:  29:58

It really does happen like that. It's almost like you've experienced this before.

Daniel Glad:  30:09

You have some experience and you've heard these stories before. Well, now that I heard the stories, I mean we, you know, we work with, with law enforcement, we have all the tools you would imagine. Um, not only have I heard these stories, I have heard these stories when they've been recorded, oh wow and for some reason I'm picturing this happening at an airport bar.

Daniel Glad:  30:22

I don't know, that's actually, I mean, that is actually happening. A couple of our cases airport bars or large hotel suites or conference rooms. There's a really famous case from the well, it's dated now, it's from the 90s, but they made a movie out of it, starring matt damon. It's called the informant, um, and it was about the lysine uh, the lysine cartel. Lysine is an additive to agricultural feed products and basically every company that made lysine in the world, including Archer Daniels, midland, adm, got together and they would meet in these hotel rooms. What they didn't know is that one of their co-conspirators had decided to flip, to turn, to start cooperating with the government and was recording those meetings those meetings I mean those recordings are now available on YouTube cooperating with the government and was recording those meetings. Um, those meetings, I mean those recordings are now available on youtube.

Daniel Glad:  31:07

Um, they made a movie movie about all, all of the all, uh, how this all worked. So so, yeah, to your point, kevin. Yeah, this comes from some experience. You can actually see, see how these uh, uh, these things happen. And one of one of the clips you know, one of one of the um, one of the conspirators trying to sort of get everyone on the same page with with to fix the prices to his competitors. I want to be closer to you than I am to any of my customers, because the customer is not my friend, you are my friend.

Megan Smyth:  31:40

Wow, that's pretty deep yeah.

Kevin Minor: 31:42 Yeah.

Megan Smyth:  31:42

Well, I don't know about you all, but what we've done here is create a date night opportunity for our listeners. You listen to this podcast. Then you go pop some popcorn and you watch Matt Damon and you're welcome.

Kevin Minor:  31:54

I've always heard the pulse pairs well with a Matt Damon performance.

Daniel Glad: 31:58 Yep, yeah.

Kevin Minor:  32:00

I have seen the movie. That is a good movie. I was not aware.

Daniel Glad:  32:04

Yeah, that case was actually handled out of the office I started in. It was our Chicago field office. I'm probably duty bound to say not everything in the movie is happening in real life. I did not work on that. I was in middle school when that was happening, so I did not work on that case. A lot of it is sensationalized. Work on that case A lot of it is sensationalized, but in terms of trying to get a greater understanding, greater awareness of what this can look like, I mean, that's a pretty good example.

Kevin Minor:  32:35

So you were in middle school during that case, but do you have any other case examples that you could share with us that you worked on?

Daniel Glad:  32:42

Some that I've worked on and some that the strike force forces handled. I think I have a couple that are going to be really interesting to your audience. The first one I think of when I think about state purchasing is our Caltrans investigation.

Kevin Minor:  32:58

So Caltrans in California. And so concludes part one of our conversation with Daniel Glad. And what an interesting guy. What an interesting job, so incredibly dense and important. Make sure you tune in for the second part of our conversation with Daniel, where he tells us some of his favorite Strikeforce stories. We learn what procurement professionals can do to aid the strike force and we talk about section two of the Sherman Act. Once again, thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure you leave us a comment, rate us or send me an email. I would be happy to talk to you. I'm Kevin Miner. Until next time.