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Back in 2011, an announcement was made by Chicago officials about a project that would build a network of robust electric car charging stations in the city.

However, the project didn’t progress as planned. Construction work was stalled and many of the stations were left unfinished. Those that were completed were not properly put into operation.

Because of this, 350Greens previous owners – the ones who closed the deal to create the electric station network – are now charged with fraud. The Chicago Tribune reported that Timothy Mason and Mariana Gerzanych, former executives of the company – face charges of falsely obtaining grant money for the project, a total of $3 million.

According to the published indictment in the Federal court of Chicago last Wednesday, the two were able to obtain the grant money by making false claims that they had hired paid vendors and subcontractors to work on the plug-in charging stations.

The city of Chicago signed a contract with 350Green Company in October of 2010. The agreement, in effect, provided 350Green with $1.9 million in the form of a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in consideration of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

According to the agreement, 350Green, under Mason and Gerzanych, has to come up with $6.8 million of its own funds to be used for the project. They never produced the money, according to the indictment.

The allegations of prosecutors is that 350Green used fake checks in order to collect money from the city for the charging stations. According to the indictment, the checks were made payable to Actium Power, which was actually a company that Gerzanych created.

The amounts of money that they asked for payments were much larger than what charging stations would normally cost. As the actual subcontractors file complaints of non-receipt of payments, the indictment reported that they were informed by 350Green that the city is not prompt in acknowledging invoices.

In addition, the company engaged in a similar transaction, albeit in a smaller scale, with the PA Department of Environmental Protection. This is apart from two other government agencies based in the San Francisco area.

The FBI was called in to investigate 350Green Company after it has stopped payments of its bills by 2013.

By this time, a good number of the 280 charging stations were already constructed. However, many of them were reportedly not in operation. A Federal judge eventually ruled a decision, giving the Chicago network to another contractor, JNS Power & Control Systems. The latter, in turn, entered into a deal with NRG eVgo, but it involved only a few DC fast-charging plug-in stations within the area.

NRG is currently in charge of the operations of the charging stations. They are also responsible for performing standing repairs and maintenance on a number of these stations.

Initially, Chicago has a few fast-charging stations in its area, comparable to other cities, when the supposed deal was announced in late 2014. On its part, NRG gave the assurance not to include these existing stations into the growing EVGO charging network all over the country, but instead promised to build more.