1. Who They Were
Computer Sciences Corporation was one of the oldest names in American IT contracting — founded in 1959, built on billions of dollars in government, intelligence, and military contracts on both sides of the Atlantic. It ceased to exist as an independent company on April 1, 2017, when it merged with Hewlett Packard Enterprise's services division to form DXC Technology (profiled separately). Its record is closed — and it is uniquely comprehensive: the same company appears in the documented history of CIA rendition flights, the collapse of Britain's largest civil IT programme, an SEC accounting-fraud case with individual executive penalties, a failed half-billion-dollar Medicaid system in North Carolina, and the destruction of the author's own startup. This fact sheet covers all of it.
2. What the Books Document — the Author's Own Case
The BizCloud story: the author founded BizCloud, a cloud-computing startup, moved his engineering operation to Belgrade, Serbia, produced more than 5,500 articles and videos on the cloud industry, and built a real brokerage presence. Around 2010, CSC appropriated the BizCloud name for its own product line. In 2013, CSC sued the author over the use of his own trademark. Facing the financial reality of litigating against a company with billions in government contracts, his lawyers advised mediation; he settled and was forced to share his company's name. The books document what followed — the bankruptcy filed from a hospital bed, more than four months of inpatient care at Stanford University Hospital, San Francisco General, and Laguna Honda — a crisis he has spoken about publicly in his film and in Ethics in Tech and Lack Thereof, because it matters that people understand what this industry can do to the people inside it. This is a first-person documented account; the trademark litigation and settlement are matters of record.
3. The Rendition Contracts — Documented by Court Records and FOI
The prime contract: court documents from litigation between charter company Richmor Aviation and broker SportsFlight — analyzed by the academic Rendition Project (Kent and Kingston Universities, with the charity Reprieve) and reported by the BBC — identified two successive prime contractors operating under a classified "prime contract" with the CIA to organize flight operations for the rendition programme: DynCorp Systems and Solutions, and then Computer Sciences Corporation, which inherited the role when it acquired DynCorp. The primes subcontracted brokers Capital Aviation and SportsFlight, which chartered aircraft from more than a dozen operators — over 60 aircraft ultimately identified in the CIA rendition fleet. Sources: The Rendition Project — companies page · Peer-reviewed analysis, The International Journal of Human Rights · BBC on the Richmor v. SportsFlight case
The El-Masri case: Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen and the rendition programme's most infamous wrong-man victim, was abducted in Macedonia on December 31, 2003, and secretly imprisoned and abused in Afghanistan; when the CIA realized its mistake, he was flown on May 28, 2004 aboard Gulfstream N982RK to Albania and dumped on a roadside. Documents obtained by Reprieve and Access Info Europe show that aircraft was hired for the purpose by Computer Sciences Corporation. The German Bundestag's committee of inquiry confirmed El-Masri's account in 2006; Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty documented the flight; and in December 2012 the European Court of Human Rights ruled — in his case against Macedonia — that his treatment amounted to torture. CSC was never charged; asked about the allegations, it stated that it supported human rights and enforced strict standards of corporate social responsibility — its response is reported here per the full-record rule. Reprieve wrote to CSC's customers — including NHS bodies and Transport for London — urging them to demand an explanation; that campaign is part of the public record. Sources: Computer Weekly — "NHS seeks explanation over CSC role in 'torture flights'" · Computer Weekly — boycott campaign · CorpWatch on the Reprieve/Access Info Europe documents
4. The NHS Disaster, Part One — "One of the Worst Contracting Fiascos in the History of the Public Sector"
The programme: under the UK's £12.4 billion National Programme for IT — the largest civil IT programme ever attempted — CSC held local service provider contracts totaling £3.1 billion to deliver the Lorenzo electronic patient record system to 220 NHS trusts across the North, Midlands and East of England. Contracted in 2003 to deliver by 2005 to 166 trusts, CSC had reached roughly 10 by 2011. The National Audit Office (May 2011) and the Public Accounts Committee (August 2011) issued damning reports; the government moved to dismantle the programme; and CSC confirmed in early 2012 that it was writing off nearly $1.5 billion of its investment. PAC chair Margaret Hodge called CSC "a rotten company providing a hopeless system" — yet, as the PAC heard in 2013, the NHS still expected to pay CSC roughly £2.2 billion under the renegotiated arrangements, because terminating the contract might have cost more than completing it. The committee's 2013 verdict: not a single NHS trust had a fully functioning Lorenzo system, total programme costs had reached £9.8 billion and climbing, and MP Richard Bacon called it "one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector." The patients whose records the system was meant to hold — 67 million people — got neither the system nor the money back. Sources: UK Parliament — Public Accounts Committee report (primary source) · BBC — "worst fiascos ever" · The Register — the ~$1.5bn write-off · Silicon UK — the £2.2bn figure and "rotten company" quote
5. The NHS Disaster, Part Two — the Accounting Fraud
| Date | Authority | Outcome | Basis | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 5, 2015 | US Securities and Exchange Commission | $190 million penalty (company) | While the Lorenzo contract was failing, CSC concealed that failure from investors: when it learned it would lose money for missing NHS deadlines, executives used accounting models with assumptions that, in the SEC's words, "artificially increased its profits but had no basis in reality," and based disclosures on the contract CSC was negotiating rather than the one it had. The SEC also found fraudulent earnings manipulation in CSC's Australia and Denmark operations, including "cookie jar" reserves | Settled — CSC neither admitted nor denied; independent ethics consultant required |
| Same order | SEC — individual executives | 8 former executives charged; 5 settled | Former CEO Michael Laphen returned $3.7 million under the Sarbanes-Oxley clawback and paid a $750,000 penalty; former CFO Michael Mancuso returned $369,100 and paid $175,000 — Mancuso had concealed a high-interest cash-advance arrangement with the NHS while telling investors CSC was hitting targets "the old-fashioned hard way" | Among the rare cases in this entire series where named executives personally paid |
Sources: SEC press release (primary source) · SEC enforcement summary page · Harvard Law School Forum analysis
6. The North Carolina Failure — NCTracks
The contract: CSC was hired to build NCTracks, the claims system processing more than $12 billion a year in Medicaid payments for 1.5 million low-income North Carolinians — children, seniors, and the disabled — and 70,000 medical providers. Per the providers' subsequent lawsuit, CSC's contract — initially $287 million — ran roughly two years late and more than $207 million over budget, pushing the system toward half a billion dollars.
The warnings ignored: State Auditor Beth Wood's office published a pre-launch audit in May 2013 finding that hundreds of critical test cases had never been executed — of 834 "critical" priority test cases, 123 had failed and 285 were never performed — and that the state had allowed CSC to write the acceptance criteria for its own work one week before testing ended. The system went live anyway on July 1, 2013, with no backup. A December 2013 audit counted roughly 3,200 defects since launch, more than 650 still active, 74 percent of those rated highly severe. Doctors, dentists and other providers went unpaid for months; in January 2014, providers filed a class action in Wake County Superior Court against CSC, the state health department, and the testing contractors, calling NCTracks "a disaster" the state was "beyond the point of no return" on. Per the full-record rule: the system was later stabilized, and federal regulators (CMS) certified it in 2015 as meeting requirements for accurate and timely claims payment, retroactively restoring $19.2 million in federal funding. Sources: NC Newsline on the providers' class action · ABC11 on the December 2013 audit (3,200 defects) · State Auditor Beth Wood's statement and audit findings · Winston-Salem Journal on the 2015 CMS certification (full record)
7. Honest Accounting
Most of this record predates the project's 2020 window; CSC ceased to exist in 2017, so its record is closed — and the closed record is the point. One company: prime contractor in the flight logistics of a torture programme, per court records and FOI documents; author of Britain's costliest civil IT failure, in Parliament's own words; an SEC fraud settlement over hiding that failure, with executives personally paying — one of the only such cases in this series; and a Medicaid system that left the providers serving 1.5 million poor patients unpaid, launched over its own auditor's warnings. Every one of these harms landed on people with no seat at the table — rendition victims, NHS patients, Medicaid providers, and one startup founder. Note per the full-record rule: the SEC fraud period (2009–2011) predates Mike Lawrie, who was brought in as turnaround CEO in March 2012 and was not charged; CSC was never charged over the rendition contracts; the NCTracks system was eventually federally certified; and CSC's stated positions are reported throughout. The lineage continues at DXC Technology — including Lorenzo itself, which DXC inherited.
8. Associations Noted in the Books
DXC Technology (successor — profiled separately), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (merger partner), Mike Lawrie (final CEO — profiled separately), and DynCorp (the acquisition that carried the rendition prime contract) are noted for context. The NHS thread continues in the Palantir fact sheet: the same health service that lost billions to CSC's Lorenzo awarded its £330 million Federated Data Platform to Palantir in 2023. Every company and person is documented on its own record.
Legal Disclaimer
This document is published as journalism and commentary in the public interest, protected as free speech and freedom of the press under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It compiles information from public records, court filings, government announcements, parliamentary and congressional investigations, and reporting by established news organizations, together with the documented first-person accounts and analysis published in the books No Ethics in Big Tech and Ethics in Tech and Lack Thereof by Vahid Razavi.
Where a fine, judgment, or settlement is described, its status (paid, under appeal, overturned, or pending) is stated as reported by the issuing authority or by reputable press as of the verification date above. Allegations in open lawsuits and investigations are exactly that — allegations — and every party is entitled to the presumption of innocence unless and until a competent court rules otherwise. Where a company or executive has prevailed in court, denied an allegation, or had a claim dismissed, that outcome is reported here as well, because the credibility of this project rests on stating the record in full. Opinions and characterizations drawn from the books are the protected opinion of the author. Corrections supported by documentation are welcome via NoEthicsInBigTech.com/contact.
Research Credit
Deep research, source verification, and document preparation for this fact sheet were performed by Claude, the AI assistant built by Anthropic, working under the direction of author Vahid Razavi. Every fine amount, case citation, and status line above was checked against the primary or press source listed beside it on the verification date. This is a living document; new rulings, fines, and investigations will be added as they are verified.