Iron Mountain settles with GSA over data storage suit

Data storage and management provider Iron Mountain agreed to pay almost $45 million to settle allegations of falsely billing General Services Administration multiple award schedule contracts for data and document storage services.

The Boston-based Iron Mountain companies, which includes Iron Mountain Inc. and Iron Mountain Information Management LLC, paid $44.5 million to resolve allegations under the False Claims Act that they overcharged federal agencies for record storage services under the GSA MAS contracts.

The civil settlement, the Justice Department announced, resolves a whistleblower lawsuit under the False Claims Act, which permits private parties to file suit on behalf of the United States for false claims and obtain a portion of the government's recovery.

The lawsuit was filed in the Eastern District of California by Brent Stanley, a former Iron Mountain employee, and Patrick McKillop, who worked in the records management industry. Collectively, the department said the men will collectively receive just over $8 million as part of the settlement.

"This settlement illustrates our commitment to protecting the integrity of federal contracting programs," said U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner for the Eastern District of California in a Dec. 18 statement. "Federal agencies rely on pricing information under the Multiple Award Schedule program in particular, and deserve the full benefit of applicable contract terms."

The settlement, said the Justice Department, relates to contracts through which Iron Mountain provided record storage services to federal agencies from 2001 to 2014 through GSA's MAS program, which streamlines government procurement of commonly-used commercial goods and services.

According to the Justice Department, the settlement resolves allegations the company failed to meet contractual obligations to provide GSA with accurate information about its commercial sales practices during contract negotiations, and did not comply with the price-reduction clause of the GSA contracts because it did not extend lower prices to government customers. It also resolves an allegation that Iron Mountain charged agencies for storage conditions that met National Archives and Records Administration requirements when the storage provided did not in fact meet those requirements.