Bid rigging

Okay kiddo, so sometimes when a group of companies want to do business with the government, they need to offer their best price in what is called a bid. It's like a game where each company says how much they are willing to do the work for and the government picks the best offer. But sometimes, instead of playing fair, some of the companies might secretly work together and agree to inflate their prices so that one of them will win the bid no matter what. This is called bid rigging and it's like cheating in the game. It's not fair to the other companies who are playing fair and it's not fair to the government who might end up paying too much for the work. That's why bid rigging is against the law and companies can get in a lot of trouble if they are caught doing it.