A plumbing contractor based in Omaha was sentenced in federal court for failing to pay the prevailing wage and falsifying federal documents to hide that fact.

US Judge Laurie Smith Camp sentenced V & V Construction, d/b/a Vincentini Plumbing, to a three-year term of probation, imposed a $25,000 fine and ordered restitution in the sum of $138,643.54.

The firm was also ordered to cooperate with the United States Department of Labor in a three-year debarment precluding its participation in federal contracts during the three-year ban.

Federal prosecutors say V & V is a residential and commercial plumbing company that was awarded plumbing and pipe-laying contracts for a pair of building projects for the Council Bluffs Public Schools in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The two schools were federally funded projects requiring compliance with the Davis-Bacon Act.

The Davis-Bacon Act requires that any participant on a qualifying federal contract pay a prevailing wage. Between June 2010 and continuing until July 2011 V & V Construction falsified certified payroll records to the United States Department of Labor stating that they had paid the required prevailing wage. In fact they had paid employees less than the prevailing wage resulting in a $138,643.54 difference between what they certified as wages paid and actual wages paid.