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The FBI and Defense Criminal Investigative Service launched a joint raid Tuesday morning at Carahsoft’s Reston, Va., headquarters. Law enforcement officials confirmed the raid but have yet to share details on what prompted the seizure of company records.

“We can confirm that DCIS executed a joint search warrant operation with the FBI in northern Virginia yesterday morning. We have nothing further to add, as this is an open investigation,” a spokesperson for the Defense Department’s audit office said in a statement. 

Richard Conway, an attorney for Carahsoft, did not return a request for comment. A company spokesperson also did not comment on the new details of the raid.

News of the raid prompted speculation about possible — but thus far unsubstantiated — links to an ongoing court case that was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland last year and involved efforts to defraud government agencies. The names of the vendors allegedly involved in the scheme were redacted. A report in Bloomberg, citing an unredacted filing, named SAP and noted that prosecutors were also examining other resellers and a unit of Accenture. 

Both companies issued statements to Nextgov/FCW indicating they were cooperating with the Justice Department in a civil investigation. 

Carahsoft employees were told Tuesday the raid was “part of an investigation into a company with which Carahsoft has done business in the past” and that the company is fully cooperating and “operating business as usual,” according to an email sent by Carahsoft President Craig Abod and obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

Carahsoft is a leading IT vendor and reseller of technology products and services to public sector organizations, with prime spots on key federal governmentwide acquisition contracts such as NASA’s Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement and the General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedule.

The raid occurred during the busiest time of the year for federal contractors. The U.S. government’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30, where agencies have to finalize budgets, allocate remaining funds and push through last-minute contracts before the deadline.

A Carahsoft employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that account representatives handling client relationships were directed by team leads to calm down vendors and assure them that there was nothing to fear.

The ongoing civil case 

Documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland last year indicate that the U.S. is looking into “whether Carahsoft conspired with other companies to rig bids, inflate prices, overcharge, and defraud the Department of Defense (DoD), among other federal government agencies” when it resold the products. The specific companies in question were redacted in the documents that Nextgov/FCW had retrieved.

For a year, Carahsoft “had not produced the full set of transaction records (including but not limited to the communications, solicitations, proposals, quotes, bids, award notices, orders, purchase orders, and invoices) for even a single project” for the Justice Department and others involved.

For months, frustration had mounted among DOJ lawyers, who claimed in court proceedings that the government’s document requests and inquiries appeared to be delayed or unfulfilled by Carahsoft.

“We have offered to rewrite the question, but the response we’ve gotten from Carahsoft is saying that they don’t want to answer the question,” Justice Department trial attorney Samson Asiyanbi said. “And it seems to us that they just don’t want to answer it. And rather — because they don’t want to answer it, they are coming up with all sorts of reasons why they shouldn’t be required to do so.”

Carahsoft paid a $75 million fine to the government in 2015 to settle claims that the company and partner firm VMWare overcharged the government and concealed commercial pricing arrangements. Carahsoft did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement.

GovExec’s Frank Konkel and Washington Technology’s Nick Wakeman and Ross Wilkers contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: Carahsoft is an advertising client of GovExec360.

Federal Air Marshals are overworked and leaving the agency at an alarming rate, a representative for the workforce told Congress on Tuesday, and they are seeking a new agency to house them. 

The marshals are always on call and often have to work in 20-hour shifts, John Casaretti, president of the Air Marshal Association told a panel of the House Homeland Security Committee, leading to low morale throughout the workforce. Exacerbating the issue, he said, are the lack of details employees are given on why they are sent on flights and the general feeling the law enforcement personnel serve no purpose on them. 

The marshals are pushing the Transportation Security Administration, their parent agency, to use more data and intelligence for determining when to place them on flights. Casaretti cautioned, however, TSA’s mission does not align with that of the Federal Air Marshals Service. Passenger screening is more regulatory than law enforcement in nature, he argued, and therefore not well suited to oversee the marshals. 

“I think we need to be out of the bureaucratic agency we find ourselves in to just be an arm of that, and we need to be released to do the law enforcement work we all signed up to do,” Casaretti said. 

Asked to where FAMS should be relocated, he said Congress would have the best judgment to make that determination but floated the Transportation Department or elsewhere within the Homeland Security Department as possibilities. 

Tina Won Sherman, the Government Accountability Office’s director for homeland security and justice, noted that while TSA has addressed many of the issues GAO has raised in recent years, it still does not have a firm grasp of the efficacy of its efforts.

“It’s been challenging and difficult to understand FAMS’ and air marshals’ ability to be effective as an aviation security countermeasure,” Sherman said. 

The issues are starting to take a toll. FAMs expect a “demanding job,” Casaretti said, but do not sign up to be “on call without compensation” or to “work punishing schedules.” The compounding issues have brought some Air Marshals to a breaking point, as he noted many of his colleagues have taken their own lives or seen their families fall apart. 

“You’re working on constant sleep deprivation and your circadian rhythm is knocked out of whack,” he said. 

Members of the Transportation and Maritime Security Subcommittee that hosted Tuesday’s hearing sympathized with the issues the witnesses presented and expressed concern about the impact on employee retention. 

“This panel especially knows the nature of the job includes frequent travel and long hours, and we know that it can take a toll on the morale and mental health of our Federal Air Marshals,” said Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y. 

Casaretti noted that most of the marshals that joined the agency when TSA was stood up following the September 11th attacks have now retired. 

“We suffered an incredible brain drain,” he said, while cautioning that new hires are receiving inadequate training.

The FBI raided the Reston, Va., headquarters of IT, software and cybersecurity services provider Carahsoft Technology Corp. on Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The raid was conducted sometime Tuesday morning, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified due to the matter’s sensitivity.

“We can confirm that the FBI conducted court-authorized law enforcement activity on Sunset Hills Road this morning. We decline to comment further,” an FBI spokesperson said in a statement.

Carahsoft is a privately held provider of IT services and software to the public sector. It has secured billions of dollars in contracts with agencies like the Social Security Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Treasury, according to GovTribe, a federal market intelligence platform owned by Nextgov/FCW parent company GovExec.

Carahsoft President Craig Abod and a company spokesperson did not immediately return requests for comment.

Carahsoft employees were told the agents were there “as part of an investigation into a company with which Carahsoft has done business in the past” and that the company is fully cooperating and “operating business as usual,” according to an email sent by Abod and obtained by Nextgov /FCW.

Several notes and images of what appeared to be the raid were posted in a Reddit channel purportedly used by company employees. Nextgov/FCW could not immediately verify the contents of the images, though one appeared to show a group of FBI agents dressed in uniform walking through the office. Another image obtained separately by Nextgov/FCW showed a trio of FBI agents dressed in uniform walking into a building entrance.

This story is breaking and may be updated.

Editor’s note: Carahsoft is an advertising client of GovExec360.

The Office of Personnel Management on Monday extended and modified an authority that makes it easier for federal agencies to hire STEM, acquisitions and cybersecurity personnel. 

Direct hire authority is granted when there is a shortage of job candidates or significant hiring needs and speeds up the appointment process by eliminating procedures that rate and rank applicants. 

OPM renewed the authority for these positions through Dec. 31, 2028. The agency first issued this direct hire flexibility in 2018 and extended it in 2023. 

The authority also was amended to include criminal investigators, specifically ones with cybersecurity and IT expertise. 

This direct hire flexibility covers positions in general schedule classification and pay grade levels 11 through 15, which includes senior personnel. 

OPM in 2023 began permitting agencies to appoint individuals for up to 10 years in certain STEM-related positions in order to staff long-term projects that aren’t likely to become permanent. 

And the Biden administration earlier this year started to modify job requirements for most of the federal government’s IT and cyber workforce to focus on skills capabilities instead of educational attainment. 

Agencies also have used direct hire authority to bring on many employees focused on artificial intelligence.