Metallurgist Admits

Metallurgist Admits She Falsified Test Results for Steel Used in Navy Submarines: For more than 30 years, Elaine Thomas altered test results for more than 240 steel productions while working for a foundry that provides metal for U.S. Navy submarines.

Ms. Thomas was named director of metallurgy for the company in 2009.

Around 1985 and through 2017, Ms. Thomas “knowingly devised and executed a scheme with the intent to defraud the United States Navy, and to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses and representations,” the indictment said.

In an example of the “scheme to defraud,” the indictment said, Ms. Thomas would sometimes alter the first digit of the test results to increase weights by 10 or 20 foot-pounds on tests that determine the toughness of the steel and the “amount of dynamic force” it can withstand.

Ms. Thomas’s falsified test results “caused the United States Navy to make contract payments that the Navy would not have made if it had known the true characteristics of the steel,” the indictment charged.