Under the category of "what were they thinking?" an employee for the National Park Service and one assigned to the office of the Secretary of Interior used government credit cards for personal expenses, according to investigations. In the Park Service case, the card was used to purchase a water heater for the personal residence of a supervisor at Gateway National Recreation Area in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, the investigators determined.
At Gateway, a maintenance worker used the card in 2015 to purchase a water heater for $430 through a "local vendor, claiming that the water heater would be used in a Government facility. The maintenance employee, however, installed the water heater in the personal residence of his supervisor, who admitted his knowledge of the scheme," investigators for Interior's Office of Inspector General determined. "When we interviewed the supervisor, we confirmed that the water heater in his home was in fact the heater purchased with the maintenance employee’s Government credit card."
While the matter was referred to the Queens, New York, district attorney, they declined to prosecute and the matter was then referred to the National Park Service.
In the second case, OIG investigated allegations "that a former special assistant assigned to the Office of the Secretary of the Interior improperly charged $1,107.66 on her U.S. government credit card for personal taxi charges."
"Our investigation revealed that between 2013 and 2015, the special assistant violated DOI policy by charging a total of $1,107.66 to her Government credit card to pay for personal taxi rides that were not associated with Government travel or business," the investigative report noted. "The special assistant resigned from DOI before we closed our investigation, and we learned that she repaid the taxi charges in full before she left. We provided this report to DOI for information only."
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Comments
As a fed who doesn't try to defraud the American people stuff like this really burns my biscuits.
Unfortunately this goes on in every time of organization or carrer group government, private company charitible, non-profit, realtors, doctors, lawyers, wall streeters...... Some people are just bad. Part of the human ethos that will likely never change.
Why should we be surprised? Jarvis, head of the NPS, arrogantly skirts the ethics board and boasts about doing so. Shouldn't his underlings behave with equal disregard of the law? What is the law and ethics to the NPS and DOI people? Nothing more than a trivial inconvenience.
I'd more agree with Eric, above, that X% of _any_ given group is a screw-up, more than Smokies Backpacker's unfortunate one-note samba that it is all Bad Guy Jarvis and His Mustachioed Posse. Haven't your neighbors and family mentioned the uncomfortable aroma of that sort of obsession?
FACT: Jarvis, head of the NPS, arrogantly ignores the ethics board, boasts about doing so and recieves no disciplinary action from DOI. The really bad part for the American taxpayer is that likely thousands of dollars were spent to unveil $1,500.
What else can you expect with the kind of example set by a former Chief Criminal Investigator for the NPS, who was prosecuted for massive theft of government funds (thank the OIG, not the NPS). She got off lightly with a fine, partial restitution, and a ticket for full retirement. No jail. Sources: San Francisco Examiner and Paul Berkowitz's book "The Case of the Indian Trader". If it wasn't for the considerations of right and wrong, and fulfilling my duty as an honest civil servant, I would take the possible consequences of getting caught any day.
This kind of thing happens the most in organizations where bad apples figure out they can get away with it. In other words, a culture lacking in accountability and an absence of internal controls. I'm especially disturbed by the employee misusing a charge card for the benefit of his supervisor.
The decision to decline to prosecute is usually made by the severity of the crime. Think $15000 vs $500. Sometimes the disciplinary action taken surpasses the penalty likely to be received in a succesaful criminal prosecution, plus the burden of proof is lower for a disciplinary action.
When fraudulent charges aren't detected for two years, it often means someone isn't reviewing statements or is just rubber-stamping approval.
I doubt these are the only instances of misuse of a charge card within NPS.
Valid points, Green Thumb. Effective disciplinary action should be more of an effective deterrent than criminal prosecution for the low dollar stuff. And if the small stuff is ignored, it lowers morale among honest employees and leads down a slippery slope to larger crimes. I would be interested in what, if any disciplinary action the maintenance employee and his supervisor received for the admitted theft of public money. Is the latter individual still a supervisor? These days, it seems that the worst discipline is reserved for whistle blowers and others who buck the system, not for actual misconduct.