CEO of environmental consulting firm will spend 3 years in prison for alleged fake reports

Lucas Finton, Memphis Commercial Appeal
·2 min read
The Horton family pulls down the curtain on the new sign bearing Judge Odell Horton's name, officially naming the federal building in Memphis after Horton alone.

The chief executive officer of an environmental consulting firm will spend three years in prison after being convicted of submitting false reports to state regulators in Tennessee and Mississippi.

The Department of Justice said DiAne Gordon, the co-owner of Environmental Compliance and Testing, sent at least 405 fake lab reports and chain of custody forms from her company to state regulators since 2017.

Prosecutors say some of the reports were completely made-up and others were forged from a reputable testing lab.

Gordon's company would be hired, often by concrete companies according to a press release from the DOJ, to test storm water, process water, and wastewater samples for companies to meet permit requirements.

"Correct and accurate test results of discharges into rivers and streams and the honest reporting of those results to regulatory authorities are important parts of the [Clean Water] Act's regulatory framework," said U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee Joseph C. Murphy Jr.. "Without accurate test results and reporting of those results, the Clean Water Act will not work as Congress intended. Because honest reporting of this data is so important to the functioning of the Act, our office will vigorously prosecute individuals who falsely report test results."

The case was investigated by the Environmental Protection Agency's Criminal Investigation Division's southeast area branch, with assistance from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

Gordon signed a guilty plea in June 2021, and in addition to her three-year sentence, was ordered to pay over $200,000 in restitution to over 20 businesses she was alleged to have submitted fake documents for. One business will receive almost a quarter of the restitution, receiving over $45,000. Gordon will spend two years under supervised release after finishing her sentence.

"Today's sentence appropriately reflects the harm caused by Gordon's betrayal of her position of trust and her fraud upon her customers, the regulatory authorities and the citizens of Tennessee and Mississippi," Todd Kim, an assistant attorney of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, said.

Lucas Finton is a news reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Alleged fake reports lands environmental consultant 3 years in prison