Port Charlotte CEO sentenced to federal prison for defrauding NASA

Steven Lukens, the former CEO of Gulf Atlantic International Supply LLC, has been sentenced to 21 months in federal prison after pleading guilty earlier this year to submitting falsified documentation to NASA

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, that documentation includes fraudulent certificates of compliance, fraudulent pressure testing certificates and fraudulent test reports for parts associated with agency’s launch program.

In addition to the prison time, U.S. District Judge Carlos E. Mendoza ordered the 54-year-old Port Charlotte resident to pay nearly $1 million — $689,280.03 in restitution and to forfeit $271,024.35.

It is unclear when Lukens left the company but Gulf Atlantic International Supply, according to Florida’s Department of Corporations’ database, was voluntarily dissolved Aug. 1.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office and a copy of the plea agreement here is what happened:

Gulf Atlantic was a subtractor working for an undisclosed company that had won a contract worth up to $2.4 billion to provide “overall management and implementation of ground system capabilities, flight hardware processing and launch operations at Kennedy Space Center.”

In that position it was responsible for buying the materials needed for a host of operations associated with the launch development and space flights.

As a subcontractor that company, Gulf Atlantic under Lukens was responsible for procuring “commercial off-the-shelf items.” The products, the U.S. Attorney’s office says, were intended for “use on supporting platforms for the Artemis mission and Orion, the spacecraft designed to return humans to the moon and eventually Mars.”

As part of the process of winning the bid, Lukens sent an email in July 2013 to the company stating he was the main contact for the business which, according to the division of corporations, submitted its organization papers a month earlier.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says as that in his role, Lukens supplied parts that were meant to be used in hypergolic systems.

“Hypergolic fluids are toxic liquids that react violently and spontaneously when they come into contact with each other and are frequently used by NASA for propulsion and hydraulic power systems,” prosecutors say. The potential dangers include fire, explosion and toxic human exposure.

Given their nature, NASA put into place rigorous quality assurance standards to ensure safety.

Lukens, though, “submitted products that did not meet the quality standards and specifications required under the contract” and then turned in forged quality control documentation leading his client to believe the standards were met.

In all, between 2014 and 2021 he turned in at least 191 fraudulent quality control documents.

The company wound up paying Gulf Atlantic at least $271,024 for the parts.

According to an investigation by NASA’s Office of Inspector General, between January 2016 and April 2021 Lukens emailed the company 13,361 times “for the purpose of doing business” the plea agreement says.

Among those emails, were the fraudulent test reports, many of which OIG found “to have been doctored after investigators identified mismatched font, copy and paste errors and/or the same person’s name appearing on the signature block for different manufacturing companies’ certificates.”

After the fraud was discovered, the company that hired Gulf Atlantic was forced to identify and remove the parts it had received from Gulf Atlantic as well as research all the purchase orders to make sure there weren’t more issues.

The cost for that work was determined to be $418,255.68.

This case was investigated by the NASA Office of Inspector General. It was prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Rachel Lyons.