A Chelmsford man has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $1 million for a fraud scheme targeting military veterans in order to receive specialized government contracts for his construction company.

David Gorski established Legion Construction Inc. in 2006, recruiting a disabled Korean War veteran to act as the company’s straw owner to attract federal construction contracts set aside through the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) program.

The purpose of the SDVOSB program is to provide federal contracting assistance to service-disabled veterans who own small businesses by creating set-aside and sole-source acquisitions for such businesses.

Gorski later added a second disabled veteran, Peter Ianuzzi, to serve as the next figurehead owner of Legion. Legion acquired more than $113 million in federal contracts between 2006 and November 2010, after Gorski falsely represented to federal contracting officers that the company was owned and operated by the veterans.

After being investigated for his use of SDVOSB, Gorski then began exploring ways to siphon money from Legion that would not appear as compensation exceeding the pay of the nominal veteran owner, Ianuzzi, in violation of federal regulations, including Ianuzzi “gifting” him $900,000 and establishing private bank accounts into which the company would deposit $2.5 million for Gorski’s benefit. Before the bank accounts could be opened, however, a federal grand jury issued subpoenas to Legion and several witnesses.

Gorski was found guilty by a jury in June 2016 following a 12-day trial of conspiring to defraud the United States by impairing the lawful governmental function of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the General Services Administration, the Army and the Navy in the implementation and administration of the SDVOSB. He was also convicted of four counts of wire fraud.