Dam Safety Engineer Indicted After Taking $1.3M to Fake Inspections

On April 3rd, 2024, Craig T. Harmon — a licensed professional engineer and sole-proprietor structural engineering consultant operating as Harmon Engineering Solutions in Whitefield County, Montana — was indicted on 57 federal counts including 42 counts of wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343, one count of conspiracy to commit bribery under 18 U.S.C. § 371, and 14 counts of making false statements in a federal program matter under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, after a Montana Dam Safety Program audit and GPS fleet-tracking analysis revealed he had spent nine years submitting falsified annual safety certifications for six county-owned dams without conducting the required physical inspections. The investigation was triggered when Army Corps of Engineers emergency inspectors responding to fall 2023 flooding in the Millhaven watershed identified a Category II structural spillway deficiency at Millhaven Reservoir Dam — directly contradicting Harmon's report filed four months earlier certifying the structure as sound and requiring no remediation. GPS records subpoenaed from Harmon's company vehicle showed his truck had never come within 40 miles of Millhaven Reservoir Dam on any of the seven inspection dates he certified across seven years; similar analysis confirmed he skipped on-site visits at three of the remaining five dams in at least four of his nine contract years. Financial forensics identified 42 payments from four agricultural water-rights stakeholders and a regional grain cooperative totaling $1,308,000, recorded as consulting fees against no documented scope of work. The two structural deficiencies Harmon actively concealed — spillway cracking at Millhaven Reservoir Dam and upstream-face erosion at Clarkfield Diversion Dam — went unremediated for years while downstream communities, including the residents and farmlands dependent on Millhaven's municipal water supply reservoir, remained unknowingly exposed to infrastructure his own PE stamp had declared safe. Disclaimer: This video is a dramatization based on real events. Some visual content was created with artificial intelligence assistance. Some details have been fictionalized and all names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.