• by David Kaplan , March 17, 2005

After taking early retirement last month when his name surfaced in testimony during the federal criminal trial [MediaDailyNews, 2/16/2005], Ray Simko, president of strategic planning at WPP Group's MindShare, pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to defraud the government, filing false claims and making false statements, the U.S. District Attorney's office said in a statement.

Simko's name came up repeatedly during trial of Shona Seifert and Thomas Early, two former executives at Ogilvy & Mather--a sister WPP agency--as the executives were accused and recently found guilty of falsifying time sheets on the White House's anti-drug media campaign run by the federal ONDCP. The two were found to have padded bills related to the account, thereby defrauding the government of roughly $3 million.

Simko, 56, had previously worked with Seifert and Early at O&M in 1999, when Simko was the senior partner in charge of media on the ONDCP account. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, a spokesman from the U.S. District Attorney's Office said.

All three are scheduled to be sentenced in May.