Records for nuclear missile parts allegedly falsified

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The owners and an employee of a now-defunct Florida company have been charged with falsifying test records for metal that was to be made into nuclear missile components.

A two-count fraud indictment returned Wednesday accuses Timothy J. Muldoon, 53, and Tina A. Muldoon, 46, and sales manager Russell B. Cohen, 47, of forging test documents to show they had performed required quality testing on 48 metal bars.

The company won a contract in 2003 to supply metal to Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, which manages a plant in southern Kansas City for the U.S. Energy Department.

The metal bars were to have been used for a cylinder housing a system "designed to prevent inadvertent nuclear detonations," according to the indictment.

Honeywell employees became suspicious in October 2003 when they noticed the documentation for the 48 metal bars was identical.

Agents from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense raided the company's headquarters in February 2004.

The forged documentation cost the government $56,386, including labor by Honeywell, retesting, and the cost of unusable material, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City.

Fred Haddad, a lawyer who represents Timothy Muldoon in a similar criminal case in Florida, said the metal had been tested. He said the issue was whether multiple testing required under the contract had been properly documented.

The Muldoons were to have pleaded guilty to fraud charges in Florida in early November. But on Nov. 1, prosecutors and defense attorneys asked for a delay, noting that the Muldoons' attorneys had traveled to Kansas City to discuss a "global settlement of all charges."