What reason did they have for continuing unprofitable work? I can see waiting out a contract, but after continuously having to offset costs you'd think someone would suggest simply sticking with governmental contracts.
It's unclear to me from the article, but if the unprofitable work was required in order to generate costs that could plausibly be attributed to a cost+ contract, then they could still be coming out ahead. Another reason might be just empire building. Better to be in charge of a big pie with good profit than small pie with great profit.
Almost certainly some people were getting kickbacks for the work. With stuff like this it's rare there's not abundant personal incentives for those involved to continue the fraud.
