Posted by Jack
Every year, the government loses millions of dollars to fraudulent charges on government-issued credit cards—with some federal workers caught buying BMWs and home theaters or going on smaller personal shopping trips at grocery stores and other retail shops. Despite attempts by lawmakers, the Obama administration has failed to rein in the abuse. This widespread problem continues to plague agencies across the federal government. 
It first came to the President’s attention in 2008 that we had a serious problem with misuse and outright fraud committed by government employees using 3.5 million SmartPay charge cards they were issued.
$29.2 billion was charged in 2012 according to the GAO, but nobody seems to have any idea how much of that was illegal, we just know that a large amount of it was abuse and fraud. Check out the following examples and how large this problem is:
The IG for the Veterans Affairs Department reported last year that VA employees spent $650,000 in improper credit card purchases. Likewise, the EPA’s IG reported that some agency’s employees had used their federal charge cards to buy gym memberships for themselves and their family members, as well as lavish dinners. The Jobs Corps was also flagged by auditors for similar abuse. A handful of workers and students were caught using their cards to pay for personal cell phone bills, trips to the hair salon and shopping sprees.
Almost a side note in the report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration was the fact that in fiscal 2011 the IRS travel card program had issued about 52,000 individually billed travel card accounts. That’s more than one card for every two IRS employees, a workforce that totaled 97,717 staffers at the end of 2012.
The first question: Why does the IRS need so many credit cards? At a total of $121 million in related charges in fiscal 2011, that’s a lot of travel on the taxpayer’s dime – much of which was spent auditing taxpayers.
A Government Accountability Office audit in 2008 found 41 percent of the credit card transactions it examined did not observe government purchasing rules (abuse). And 48 percent of transactions over $2,500 violated federal rules, according to the report.
The long list of misuse and abuse included Debra K. Durfey, a longtime employee at the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon, wrote convenience checks – part of the government’s purchasing program – of more than $640,000 from 2000 to 2006 to her live-in boyfriend. Said boyfriend used the money for gambling, mortgage payments and car expenses, according to the GAO and Justice Department. Durfey was sentenced to 21 months in prison followed by 36 months of supervised release, and ordered to pay $642,319 in restitution.
An audit by the Inspector General of the Department of Defense revealed that civilian and military employees used their DoD-issued credit cards to get cash for gambling in casinos and hire escorts in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The report suggests that the employees might have been trying to hide the spending from their spouses.
It’s tempting to make jokes about this, especially given the lack of effective oversight on normal procurement. How did the IG find out about the abuse? The Pentagon was paying $25,000 for a lap dance. (See details of this below) It’s not quite as funny, though, when one considers that this kind of activity represents opportunities for enemies of the US to penetrate the DoD through blackmail and honeypot schemes. If these employees are already hiding this activity from spouses, they might be hiding it from their bosses too, thinking that they can manipulate the system to keep it secret from both. Once an outside agency discovers the activity, they can put pressure on a mark by threatening to expose it.
A criminal complaint filed this week states that Glenn Allen Bates, 57, admitted to the accusations while meeting with investigators last summer. Bates told investigators that he stole from the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System retail store that he managed, as well as its vending machines.
He “became friendly with a stripper named ‘Ashley’ and often paid her $500.00 or more per night for lap-dances,” reads the complaint from Special Agent Frederick Lane of the VA’s Office of the Inspector General. “Bates stated he also saw other strippers and prostitutes, but he primarily saw Ashley. Bates stated that he became addicted to the sexual encounters and he stole cash from the Canteen to pay for this addiction.”
Department of Transportation employees may have used government travel cards to obtain as much as $3.6 million in illegal cash advances and purchases.
The estimate by the DOT inspector general only covered government travel card transactions in 2012, according to a recently released report by the government watchdog.
In one example cited by the IG, a Federal Aviation Administration employee obtained more than $1,400 in cash advances not related to official travel.
A second FAA employee received a substantial cash advance just before attending a NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.
Sources: Various internet - First source Second source Third source Fourth source Fifth source Sixth source
Hello, DOJ????? It’s THEFT!!! Prosecute accordingly!
‘Course that would take assets away from discrimination witch hunts in police departments . . . . .
Just imagine how much our taxes could be lowered if our own gov’t wasn’t stealing from us. Add to the saving the millions or even billions we pay for the first families vacations, the GOA’s lavish conferences, every benefit under the sun given to illegals and huge bonuses paid to administrators who don’t do their jobs, violate laws and can’t be fired.
Lower-level employees get their work ethics from those above them. When they see the theft and corruption going on at the very top down to their supervisor it is logical that they too would feel they could behave in a similar manner.
When no one is held accountable for their actions you’ll get a corrupt gov’t. And that is what we now have.
Peggy, you said a mouthful. I know…it’s terrible. I think the penalty for such theft ought to be increased.
Just yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine about the fraud in Medicare (he’s a retired doctor) and he was appalled at the abuse and said its been that way for a long time. The saddest part is when people rob from the medicare pot they are stealing from those who can least afford it.
You Jack speak to issues you know something about such as your profession as a police officer. I too address educational issues since I retired from my profession after over 25 years.
The waste and abuse in education alone is criminal. School’s budgets are based on what was spent the previous year. Come the end of the fiscal year the district business dept. would be flooded with purchase request by managers who were trying to zero out their current budgets so their next year’s budget would be the same and the COLA would increase.
I can remember years when our benefits were cut, we got zero or 1-2% raises, yet my dept. of approx. 100 employees all got brand new desk chairs that each cost $300 whether we needed one or not. Campus police got three brand new vehicles, the athletic dept. got two huge vans and the whole district office got it second complete modular workstations and furniture for the second time in five years.
Every school and district has top CEO, principles, chancellors, superintendents, presidents, vice presidents, provost, etc. who each get paid $300-500k a year plus benefits, perks and special accounts.
Add all of this up nation wide and it a huge pile of cash. And what do our kids get out of it? A failing 18% of 8th graders are proficient in their own US history. As someone pointed out today I’ll wager most of them didn’t know it was VE day today, what it is and how it affects their lives today.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/05/04/fail-only-18-percent-of-8th-graders-proficient-in-us-history/
Theft is rampant from DC to our school districts. Like I said the culture of corruption is set at the highest level and filters down. It corrupts those in the middle too, like our VA facilities that are denying our vets life saving services while taking home huge bonuses for quality of work they should have been fired for.
Government thieves don’t need a credit card to steal when the whole system is get up to facilitate massive theft at every level.
Someone once said, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
Allow me to expand on the above quote that someone said …
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.”
On the above train of thought, this should piss off everyone including Democrats.
5 ‘Clinton Cash’ Revelations That Have Leftists Steaming:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/05/11/5-clinton-cash-revelations-that-have-leftists-steaming/