A Masury man has been sentenced to 3 years of probation for billing Primary Health Network of Sharon for construction services that were never performed.
Chris O’Brien, 60, was the first of five defendants to resolve his case – he pleaded guilty on Feb. 14, 2024, to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud – and the first to be sentenced.
Federal sentence guidelines called for a sentence of 8 to 14 months in prison.
U.S. District Court Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan also ordered that O’Brien serve 50 hours of community service each year, to provide any requested financial information to his probation officer and that he not incur new credit charges or open lines of credit without permission of his probation officer.
Along with co-defendents Mark Marriott and Drew Pierce, former PHN officials, O’Brien also must pay $493,869 in restitution. Marriott and Pierce have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Other defendants are John Laeng, a former PHN official who pleaded guilty, and O’Brien’s brother, John, who was convicted at trial, but has filed motions for acquittal and a new trial.
Chris O’Brien owned Excel Construction, which worked on several PHN building projects.
According to O’Brien’s sentencing memorandum: “In and around March of 2018 through November of 2019, an unnamed individual – Individual 2 – was in a financial struggle and reached out to … Drew Pierce for help. Mr. Pierce suggested that Individual 2, who owned a flooring business, submit fraudulent invoices to Excel Construction for services that were never performed. Excel, a general contracting/construction company owned and operated by Mr. O’Brien that was performing legitimate construction work for PHN at the time, added those invoices to its own billings to PHN. Excel was then issued checks totaling $136,200 from PHN. The funds were then forwarded by Excel to Individual 2, and no funds were retained by Excel.”
After this occurred, O’Brien sought legal advice, learned that what he had done was illegal, and cut ties to PHN, giving up $146,000 owed to Excel for legitimate work it had done, the memorandum said.
O’Brien, former owner of Penn-Ohio Electrical Contractors of Masury, liquidated Excel and “cooperated fully” with investigators, he said.
Prosecutors did not take a position on O’Brien’s sentence but said in its own memorandum: “It bears mention that Defendant’s offense was serious; he caused a significant loss to a nonprofit medical organization by conduct that he knew was wrong. He submitted fraudulent invoices to a company and sought payment on those invoices, though he knew no associated work was done. While he did not profit directly from the fraudulent invoices, since the funds were passed on to Individual 2, he did benefit from his fraud by maintaining his relationship with PHN’s leadership, which enabled him to receive contracts from PHN and profit from them.”
Ranjan waived a fine because of O’Brien’s “inability to pay.”
