Ten min. ago I got off the phone with someone who makes sure the gov't. gets less for the taxpayers' dollar. A major gov't. agency we've all heard of is a big client of mine. BUT they don't ever pay their own bills directly to us. Instead, they have a "contractor" get our bills, submit them to the gov't. agency for payment, they pay the contractor and the contractor pays us. As far as I can tell, this contractor does nothing except pass bills and checks between us and this gov't. agency. From what I can tell, this contractor is one-man shop and most likely some kind of minority set-aside or affirmative action thing. He takes our bills, marks them up by XX% and keeps the difference. A lot of
PR firms do this too, but they usually offer some kind of service for the money, like writing the press releases for the client or fielding media calls. This contractor does none of that. Sound scandalous? I bet it'd be a lot more scandalous if this gov't. agency tried to cut out the middleman.