Raids not Dannenbaums first time in spotlight (more about FBI raid)

[TexasTowelie]

Last edited Wed May 3, 2017, 10:40 PM - Edit history (1)

McALLEN — The engineering firm raided by FBI agents on Wednesday is no stranger to controversy — including at a local level.

The company’s storied past with taxpayer-funded projects across the state began to resurface Wednesday as news about the federal investigation spread across Laredo, Houston, San Antonio and McAllen.

News outlets across Texas scrambled to find a link between Houston-based Dannenbaum Engineering Corp. and the FBI searches throughout four of its eight offices in Texas.

The information that flowed soon after paints a picture of a firm that consistently lands top-dollar projects paid for by taxpayers, including the construction of the Hidalgo County border wall-levee project about a decade ago and the firm’s selection to manage the construction of county roadway projects worth more than $500 million for the Hidalgo County Regional Mobility Authority, Monitor records show.

Read more: http://www.themonitor.com/news/business/article_47cf7992-2bbe-11e7-9f01-b7cfdc58cc13.html

The Brownsville Navigation District would eventually pay Dannenbaum $15.4 million for a bridge that was never built. In 2005, the BND filed a lawsuit against the firm alleging fraud, but the public entity only recovered $1 million after reaching a settlement three years later.