IT procurement scandal at Partners Healthcare

A Suffolk County grand jury yesterday indicted a computer consultant on charges he bribed two employees at Partners Healthcare over four years to win "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in contracts with the healthcare giant, the state Attorney General's office announced. The two employees were also indicted.

Partners is the holding company that runs Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's hospitals and Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

The AG's office says Partners officials contacted them last year. Prosecutors charge Brian Colpak, 44, of Lynnfield, started paying kickbacks to Partners IT employees John DiMille, 49, of East Boston and John Cleary, 36, of Cambridge, in 2003. In exchange, they funneled IT work to Colpak's Future Tech, prosecutors charge.

According to FutureTechnologies's Web site, the company helped move Dana Farber to a large-scale data center based on two large Sun servers. The company claimed the cancer center saved $1 million a year.

The company also took credit for "a comprehensive service maintenance package that delivers world-class engineering, as well as a sophisticated yet inclusive business continuity plan" for Partners, focusing on "invoicing between multiple hospitals as well as supporting an extremely complex IT infrastructure."

Colpak pleaded innocent today in Suffolk Superior Court to four counts of commercial bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit commercial bribery. DiMille pleaded innocent to commercial bribery and conspiracy to commit commercial bribery. Cleary, charged with two counts of commercial bribery, will be arraigned on Oct. 8.

Innocent, etc.