User:DESiegel/blueware section draft

Bid rigging scandal
In early 2012, BlueWare CEO Rose Harr met then Brevard county clerk Mitch Needelman, via Matt DuPree, a former lobbyist and business partner of Needelman. On April 6, 2012, Needelman signed a contract with RoseWare LLC, one of the 10 companies within BlueWare's "corporate family." On the day of signing, $100,000 was wired to BlueWare. On April 18, 2012, former Brevard county clerk Scott Ellis filed a public records request for any and all contracts between the county clerk's office and BlueWare.

On May 3, 2012, Needelman issued an Invitation to Negotiate (ITN) for a contract to digitize old records which were being stored in a gymnasium. This ITN, which was reportedly written by BlueWare itself, had a very short schedule, ostensibly to prevent other firms from submitting bids. Responses were due to the office in 8 days, with a selection to be made 5 days later. BlueWare, which had never performed such services for government before, submitted a bid of $8.5 million under the company name BlueGem, Inc. Despite the short time-frame, the experienced document imaging company FNTI submitted a bid of $3.5 million On May 23, BlueWare was wired an additional $500,000. The contract was signed on June 29, and BlueWare received its first monthly payment of $90,000.

While this was ongoing, Needelman and Ellis were competing for the Republican nomination for the county clerk position. One of the major issues in the campaign was the contract Needelman had signed with BlueWare. It would later emerge that some of the money Needelman had arranged for BlueWare to receive was being diverted to his campaign. The primary was held on August 14, 2012, and Ellis defeated Needelman with 60.8% of the vote.

On August 30, 2012, a former BlueWare employee filed suit against BlueWare and Harr for, among other things, illegal termination. The suit claims that the employee was terminated in retaliation for threatening to expose Harr's "improper conduct" with "a certain government official in the State of Florida." Sometime in the next month, DuPree was hired by BlueWare.

On October 27, 2012, Needelman signed a $6.1 million loan with Hewlett Packard, despite that fact that the county clerk is not allowed under Florida law to borrow money. On November 8, 2012, Needelman immediate wired $5,690,526 to BlueWare. On January 8, 2013, Ellis was sworn in as Brevard country clerk and continued his investigation into the dealings between Needelman and BlueWare.

Needelman and DuPree were arrested on August 15, 2013. The next day, Harr turned herself in to the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.