TX DoD Civilian theft
Don’t know if this is a record, but has to be close to it.
Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, a civilian financial program manager at Fort Sam Houston,has been indicted on charges that she stole 100 million dollars – a huge amount of money in anyone’s book – while working for the Army.
Mello allegedly used the stolen funds to amass a real estate portfolio of 31 properties, a fleet of 78 vehicles, more than $18 million in various bank accounts linked to her, and a jewelry collection, according to court records.
Some of the luxury listings include a roughly $3.1 million, eight-bedroom, 55-car garage, 58-acre estate in Maryland and an approximately $1.1 million home in San Antonio, Texas.
It’s unclear at this time whether those properties were used to store Mello’s alleged Jay Leno-esque collection of classic, expensive cars and motorcycles.
According to the indictment, the Army civilian allegedly carried out the scheme by regularly submitting fraudulent paperwork as early as December 2016 that indicated a bogus business she controlled, named Child Health and Youth Lifelong Development, was entitled to money from the 4-H Military Partnership Grant program, a collaboration “to provide meaningful youth development opportunities for military-connected children.”
No one questioned her life style? No one thought a 55 car garage on 58 acres was just a bit past your typical GS-14? According to the article, her legal team supposedly has until January 19th to reach a deal. Me, I’m thinking her civilian bosses and key oversight folks should have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.
Mello is charged with five counts of mail fraud, four counts of engaging in a monetary transaction over $10,000 using criminally derived proceeds and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.
If convicted, Mello faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each fraud charge, up to 10 years in prison for each spending statute charge and a mandatory minimum of two years in prison for the aggravated identity theft charge.
Got a plea deal right here…replay all the money, even what you spent, and go to jail for life. Or, just get immediate death and your estate pays it. Talk about a breach of trust…how many substandard barracks, underpopulated chow halls, etc. would 100 mill take care of?
H/t to Jeff LPH for this one.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Army, Crime
The most amazing thing is that somehow she scored an eight bedroom, 55 car garage and 58 acre estate for only $3,100,000.
Well, it IS in Maryland. Has anyone checked AS TO whether the mailbox has a door?
Folks at All-Points Logistics will know.
Maybe she can get some sweetheart pre-sentencing diversion option like what was offered to Hunter Biden.
Bigger in Texas, indeed.
She will be working for the Biden or Clinton family next.
If she’s trying to emulate those families, she did it all wrong.
Or All-Points Logistics.
6 months at home ankle monitor and a $10,000 fine?
If she donates to democrats, yep.
Does she get to keep garage and contents? Does Julio get to keep coming around to keep things trim and tidy?
We need my commands travel office to take over the oversight of her books. The penny pinchers in that office denied a $5 taxi receipt because I was back on base from my TAD trip. I told them I was dragging 150lbs of test gear so I wasn’t about to walk from where the bus dropped me off back to the shop. Still got denied.
That’s okay. I had to go TDY 3 months before I retired. I filed my voucher to pay off my gov credit card because they made me use it back then. Three months later it had not come in but I had to clear so I had to pay $400. Two months later the money comes in they try to credit the credit card which has been canceled. Then they said they were going to send me a check.
I have to tell you the mail service has been slow because it was 10 years ago. Still waiting on the check. Nobody seems to know what happened to it.
Look at it this way, your retirement only cost you $400 to buy your time. Bargain.
I looked into buying my military time at my job, which would have given me 4 more years added to time already worked. 10 years ago, it was 19k. They based that number on how long I was out and when I expected to retire. It wasn’t worth the extra $40 or so a month in retirement pay.
That’s the way I saw it at the time.
$40 isn’t much. Around here would be a lot more than that for 4 years state service.
She did buy some nice classic muscle cars for the garage.
Since this is in Maryland, there wouldn’t happen to be an 80’s vintage Jaguar on that list? Perhaps purchased from a Junior VP with a proud, but humble, company selling software to the federal government. You know, a stylish chap of Viking descent who is known for his dapper threads that include $4 suits and $1 ties who carries himself with the unmistakable swagger of a connoisseur of fine screw-top wines such as Thunderbird?
And here I was sweating out my receipts on DTS vouchers.
Well this is the DC area where fraud is the norm.
Nope, Texas.
“People like Mz. Mello are why we need more agents!”
As for this scumbag of a thieving Federal employee, thirty years being the cleaning lady at an Army barracks sounds about right. Along with repaying ALL the money.
Is she even on the IRS’s radar? And if not, why not.
Check which politicians she donates to… that likely explains it
It was the IRS that got suspicious. They got CID involved and both agencies worked the case.Western District of Texas | Army Civilian Employee Indicted in San Antonio for Alleged $100 Million Fraud Scheme | United States Department of Justice Her supervisors must have been really clueless.
It was the IRS that caught her. She would have kept getting away with it till she retired.
The sad thing, if I’m reading this right, is that most of that money was supposed to go to military kid’s (dependents) programs, especially if Mom or Dad or both are deployed. I know it helped me out after being laid off some years ago (stay away from the pulp and paper industry) when I was in the ANG, and took advantage of the back to school school supplies when I was looking for work.
For my child, not me. Shoulda been more specific.😁
Hey, nobody here is gonna judge you if you got some free crayons…oh wait, you’re not a Marine. 😂
I’m pretty sure she’s going to be in the running for kunt of the year. We will have to wait until the awards banquet to find out.
How much or did she donate to a political party / candidate might just indicate what will happen to her.
You’d think that after the first couple million she’d start “investing” in overseas banks and purchasing property in a location without an extradition treaty. For a “smart crook” she was remarkably stupid.
I agree that returning the funds is a mandatory goal. Perhaps the increase in value of the real estate will help make it back.
If the crook seems stupid, making it easy to find the loot, you probably missed a really clever bolt-hole with more, possibly much more.
“…..reach a deal.”
Suuure. WE get to seize, sell, and liquidate ALL (ALL!) your assets, everything over $10 value, and YOU get to stay out of jail. Maybe.
100 million reasons as to why we can’t have nice things…and why the taxpayers are 34 TRILLION $s in debt. That’s over $10 million a year she stole, if you start from Dec ’16. Imma with others wondering if this is just the stuff she didn’t stash offshore somewhere.
She stole a $100 million supposedly running a military themed day care? This is the stuff I show to people who come up with weird government conspiracy theories. The US government s so inept it can’t wipe its own ass without help.
It gets better.
“She earned it,” Flores told the local outlet. “I don’t see how one thing is related to the other.”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/woman-allegedly-scammed-100-million-army-shes-retiring-army-benefits
That ____ needs to kick at the end of a noose!