A state agency project and employee training for a private company were among the items USC inadvertently paid for with university money, according to the indictment of a USC employee released last week.
The South Carolina State Attorney's office announced July 18 that Blake Langland, a College of Engineering and Computing project manager since 2004, was indicted on five counts of stemming from efforts to pad his full-time salary with grant money. In all, Langland faces three counts of receiving anything of value to influence action of public employee, one count of use of official position or office for financial gain and one count of acceptance of rebates and extra compensation.
The trail followed by the State Attorney's office is immense, stretching back seven years and over $1 million in university grant funding. The story begins with the 2009 founding of Columbia-based software company SysEDA, Inc., which was owned in part by Langland.
In July 2010, SysEDA was hired as a subcontractor for a "multi-year grant project" funded by USC's Office of Naval Research (ONR). According to the indictment, SysEDA's income over the seven fiscal years that followed primarily consisted of nearly $1.3 million in USC grant funds. Of that, about half eventually went to Langland or Design Information Technology, Inc., a company Langland owned. From this he took an "effective kickback" of $420,000.
The indictment says that SysEDA's partners decided in May 2014 that the company was "unable to commercialize licensed technology" as intended. Langland apparently took control of the company's finances soon after.
From there, Langland began inappropriately billing USC for supposed consultation work done on SysEDA projects. SysEDA invoices sent to the university would include fees for a consultant unnamed in the indictment, but the identity was "merely an alias" for Blake Langland. In doing so, Langland made SysEDA "essentially ... a pass-through entity for [Langland] to route grant money from USC" to his own company, Design-IT.
In submitting invoices for consultation performed by Design-IT, Langland was able to receive money from the university for work he and other employees had already performed on the ONR-funded project. SysEDA partners were apparently unaware of the amount of money flowing into Design-IT from the university.
The indictment states that USC was billed for one item Langland and Design-IT employees worked on which was entirely separate from projects the university granted funding for and did not benefit the university in any way. Referred to as TEAMS, Langland sold the project to the South Carolina Department of Transportation, which at the time employed a "close family member" of his. Langland also billed the university, through SysEDA, for time he spent training Design-IT employees.
Though the indictment did not reveal exact numbers, it says that Langland paid his subordinate and student employees "very little" despite billing the university at a significant mark-up for their work.
Jeff Stensland, USC's associate director for public relations, confirmed that Langland is suspended indefinitely without pay. According to The State, Langland's indictment was handed down in late June but not announced until last week.
The State reported July 19 that Langland was freed on a $50,000 bond the day after his indictment was announced.