A 44-year-old Herndon man, Sarosh Mir, pleaded guilty last week to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, in a case where he helped a technology company defraud the Washington, D.C. government. Mir was to be tried in the district’s federal court.

According to court documents, Mir was charged on Aug. 5 with both conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government. He waived his right to a trial on Aug. 13 and accepted a plea agreement the next day.

Court documents detail Mir’s involvement with a scheme initiated by Dunn Loring resident Sushil Bansal, owner of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation (AITC), which did work for the D.C. government and others. Mir worked for AITC until June 2007, when Bansal asked him to start another company, Innovative IT Solutions (IITS). Mir received a $10,000 raise to nominally act as the president of the new company and represent IITS in meetings, but Bansal was in control of the company.

Bansal wanted to start IITS because he wanted to expand his business without losing its Certified Business Enterprise status, and also so that he could submit more résumés for bids and because the original company had developed a questionable reputation in some circles, documents say.

Around July 2008, the two men began submitting fraudulent time sheets and invoices with inflated hours and "ghost employees" — names of people who did not work for their companies — to the D.C. government and elsewhere. One of the men to whom the fraudulent documents were sent was Yusuf Acar of D.C., who worked for the city’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer and was allegedly taking bribes from Bansal.

Mir did not know that Bansal, who was charged in March with conspiracy to bribe a public official and conspiracy to launder money, was bribing officials, but documents say Mir helped to create the fraudulent invoices and in one case supplied the name of one of his friends to be used as a ghost employee. Prosecutors estimate that more than $124,000 was improperly gained with Mir’s assistance.

Acar was charged with conspiracy to commit bribery, wire fraud, conflict of interest and conspiracy to launder money. A fourth man, Farrukh Awan of South Riding, has also been charged in the case and is accused of bribing Acar, as well as conspiracy to launder money.

Mir took a plea agreement that dropped the charge of defrauding the U.S. government provided that he waive his right to a grand jury indictment, his right to appeal and the statute of limitations on the case. The punishment for the wire fraud charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the amount that was improperly gained, as well as restitution and three years of supervised probation.

However, prosecutors said that since Mir had accepted responsibility for the crime, given quick notice of his intent to plead guilty and, moreover, had been determined to be a minor participant in the conspiracy, his punishment would likely be along the lines of six to 12 months in jail and a possible fine of $2,000 to $20,000. The prosecution also said it would not oppose a sentence of probation that would substitute at least some of the jail time with house arrest.