— BY Kelly Jeffcote AND Fred McKinney, PH.D

Ever since public and private programs were created in the late 1960s to increase the utilization of diverse businesses, there have been “entrepreneurs” who have taken advantage of the programs by creating businesses that appear to be eligible for the benefits of these programs but are not. The most common offenders of these programs are companies that put eligible persons in charge of businesses, but are owned, managed, and controlled by persons who would not be eligible if they were listed as the owners. Third-party certification was designed to address this problem of what are known as “fronts”.

Certificati....