An Indian-American, convicted of faking important construction tests on hundreds of city buildings, has been sentenced to seven to 21 years in prison
and ordered to pay USD 225,000 in reparations.
Manhattan Supreme Court sentenced seven to 21 years in prison to V Reddy Kancharla, president of Testwell Laboratories, and ordered to pay USD 225,000 in reparations, Dnainfo, that covers local Manhattan news reported.
Kancharla has been convicted of faking important construction tests on hundreds of city buildings including Yankee Stadium and the Freedom Tower.
While sentencing Kancharla, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Edward McLaughlin noted that his decision was not influenced by two suicide attempts by Kancharla who told the judge he regrets his "seriously flawed" decisions, the
newspaper reported.
According to Dnainfo, Kancharla was wearing a neck brace because of a recent surgery stemming from a hanging attempt.
"In retrospect, I should have paid more attention to the concrete mix design programme and should have implemented more checks and balances in place at Testwell," he said.
Prosecutors have argued that Kancharla's actions put the lives of New Yorkers at risk by cutting on their safety.
"There are only so many corners you can cut, so many rules you can ignore, before you have created an unsafe building," Assistant District Attorney Diana Florence was quoted as saying by Dnainfo.
"And yet, Kancharla cut corners, falsified data,
allowed rules to be ignored and tests to be skipped, or done by people without the proper training," she said.
"Not once in a blue moon, but thousands of times -institutionalised fraud on the grand scale."
In the first suicide attempt, Kancharla reported that He slashed his wrist and took sleeping pills in February. The 46-year-old engineer immigrated from India 25 years ago.