Jesse Brown VA supervisor charged with pocketing kickbacks

A supervisor at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center faces federal charges after allegedly getting kickbacks to steer nearly $2 million in orders that were never fulfilled.

Thomas Duncan, a supplies manager at the Near West Side hospital, received about $36,350 in a scheme that ran from 2012 to 2019, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

Duncan, 37, allegedly agreed to accept kickbacks from Daniel Dingle, the president of a Dolton medical supply company, to place orders from Dingle’s company.

Dingle made checks payable to Helping Hands Property LLC, a private company managed by Duncan, to hide the money’s true purpose, the indictment states.

The duo allegedly knew that many of the orders wouldn’t be delivered to the hospital, at 820 S. Damen Ave. Duncan also allegedly told his employees to mark deliveries from Dingle’s company as completed even though the products never arrived.

As a result, Dingle’s company received at least $1.7 million in orders from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the indictment states.

When the VA inspector general began investigating the payments, Duncan allegedly told Dingle to lie and say the money was for work performed by Helping Hands properties.

In addition to the wire fraud charges, Duncan also faces a count of witness tampering and a count of falsifying records. Dingle was charged with four counts of wire fraud.

Their arraignments haven’t been scheduled.