Leid Stories - 01/31/14

Hard ‘Justice’ Kills Software Company, Imprisons Its Execs

Advocates Charge It Was An Organized Hit; Demand Probe

 

Six men who formed the core of Investigative Resource Planning Solutions (IRP Solutions), a small but tenacious black-owned software-development company specializing in solutions for law-enforcement agencies, believed they were on the brink of a multimillion-dollar breakthrough after two years in the cutthroat business.

They had developed a software solution for a major communications and coordination problem that law-enforcement, national security and intelligence agencies said affected not only the response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks, but to any such attacks and even day-to-day investigations.  Their product, an interagency case management and investigation system, got rave reviews; one agency requested quotes for more than $100 million worth of business.   

But without warning on Feb. 9, 2005, 21 FBI agents swarmed their Colorado City, Colo., offices under a warrant to gather evidence of fraud. And thus began for the six men a nightmare in which their company was destroyed, they were convicted on highly contentious charges in a most unusual federal trial, and currently in federal prison serving between 7 and 10 years.

The first part of this story on Leid Stories today.