Longtime VA Contracting Officer Sentenced to Over Five Years in Prison for Defrauding the Agency of More Than $500,000

PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney David Metcalf announced that Ahmed Hassan, 71, of Collegeville, Pennsylvania, was sentenced today by United States District Judge John F. Murphy to 64 months’ imprisonment and three years of supervised release for defrauding his employer, the Department of Veterans Affairs (“the VA”), of over $500,000. The defendant was also ordered to pay $565,058.70 in restitution, with $150,000 of that restitution due in 30 days, and a $2,200 special assessment.

Hassan was charged by indictment in April 2021. After a one-week trial in October of 2024, a federal jury convicted the defendant of 22 counts of wire fraud for misusing his VA position to steal from the agency.

As proven at trial, Hassan was a trusted supervisory engineer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (“VA Medical Center”) in Philadelphia. In that position, Hassan was responsible for all mechanical and large HVAC systems at the Medical Center and was further charged with overseeing and implementing contracts in his area of responsibility.

From approximately 2013 through October 2017, Hassan schemed to defraud the VA by drafting and submitting for payment, false invoices of a shell company called HT Mechanical. But unbeknownst to Medical Center management, and in violation of Hassan’s duties to the VA, HT Mechanical was a fraudulent entity that Hassan had secretly set up with his then-paramour, Lynn Hanrahan[1] — a social worker with no knowledge of, or expertise in, HVAC or mechanical systems — in order to defraud the VA.

For years, the defendant made up fake work, drafted false invoices on HT Mechanical letterhead, submitted them for payment to the VA under the VA purchase card program, and lied to the VA, claiming that the work had been done, when the so-called jobs did not exist, and no work was performed. After the VA made payment to HT Mechanical based on the defendant’s lies, his paramour returned the payments to the defendant, either by check or by giving the defendant envelopes of cash.

“Fraud against the government hurts us all,” said U.S. Attorney Metcalf. “It heightens the cost of public services and threatens their availability to deserving citizens. In this case, out of sheer greed, Ahmed Hassan thoroughly betrayed the veterans the VA exists to serve and stole from American taxpayers. Today’s sentence shows that criminals who cheat the U.S. government will pay for it, in the end.”

“This sentencing demonstrates that those involved in defrauding VA, particularly VA employees in positions of public trust, will be held accountable,” said Special Agent in Charge Christopher Algieri with the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General’s Northeast Field Office. “The VA OIG will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to ensure the integrity of VA’s programs and services.”

The case was investigated by Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General and the FBI, and is being prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Megan Curran and Assistant United States Attorney Mary E. Crawley.