EPA phony soldier/CIA agent rips off agency
Jeff sends us a link to the Washington Post which reports that John C. Beale, an EPA employee, cost them thousands of dollars while he was employed by them. He convinced several supervisors that he was also a CIA agent, that during his (non-existent) service in Vietnam he contracted malaria that needed lots of medical attention. Besides the amount of work he missed, he also charged some trips to Las Vegas to the agency;
John C. Beale duped a series of supervisors, including top officials of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, disappearing from the office and explaining his absences by telling his bosses that he was doing top-secret work for the CIA and its “directorate of operations.”
He lied about contracting malaria (he didn’t) while he served in Vietnam (all his military service was in the United States) to obtain a parking space reserved for the disabled that cost the EPA $8,000 over three years. He took personal trips to Los Angeles for which he charged the government more than $57,000, according to new court filings.
In all, Beale was paid for 21 / 2 years of work he did not perform since early 2000 and received about $500,000 in “retention bonuses” he did not deserve for nearly two decades, according to court papers and interviews.
According to the article, no one in the EPA bothered to check on his claims. Probably because it’s not their money that he was stealing. Most of the people I know in the EPA are guilt-ridden Vietnam Era hippies who wouldn’t know a veteran if he came to work in tiger stripe fatigues and camouflage face paint.
Even during the probe, which began in March, Beale continued to insist that he could not be interviewed because of his work for the CIA, Sullivan said. Only when investigators offered to question him in a secure room at the agency’s Langley headquarters did he admit he had no connection to the CIA, Sullivan said.
Way to commit to the lie, Beale. But, he cost taxpayers more than $800k with his lies. The article says he’s been a phony spook since 1994.
Category: Phony soldiers
No, this guy’s legit. I remember seeing him at the Farm while I was taking Secret Squirrel lessons there.
EPA – Strike 1
Phony CIA – Strike 2
Vietnam War Phony – Strike 3
Pack him up and send his ass to the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary.
$500k in retention bonuses? And civilians think paying a nuke or a SEAL $30k is wasteful?
I really hate to defend the individuals in the EPA, but one of the most conservative and gun living guys I know also happens to be an EPA employee. I’m still not sure how he gets his pickup truck with the NRA and Bush-Cheney stickers into the parking lot, though.
As far as this jackass goes, let him rot in jail. And every one of his supervisors who thought that this was close to legitimate should be bringing cardboard boxes into the office with them on Monday.
Can we just shut down the EPA? They are obviously useless, wasteful, and of no benefit to anyone except scammers. We cannot afford them.
OWB: I could support that. At a bare minimum, their budget should be cut by 50% and their regulatory authority likewise curtailed.
The EPA is seriously out of control and living in a dream world. Unfortunately, that also seems to be the case with much of US society in general.
Mustang2LT: None of those are crimes per se. However, Uncle Sam does kinda take a dim view of fraud against him – especially 6+ figure fraud. I’m guessing he’s going to do some felony time.
#7 Hondo
“Don’t steal from Teh Gubbment. They hate the competition.”
As for the rest of you that want to throw this poser IN jail, I must strongly disagree. Instead, throw him UNDER the jail. With daylight and sunshine piped in on alternate Tuesdays.
This guy should be working for APL.
True Hondo, but he was out of strikes before I could get to the fraud part. His shitbaggery proves the adage that these damn phonies usually have more going on than just the phoniness.
B Woodmant: sounds OK to me. But I’m guessing the SCOTUS would find that contrary to the 8th Amendment, even though fully deserved in this case.
— break —
Mustang2LT: agreed. Unfortunately the first 3 don’t count, legally speaking. They just prove him a lying putz.
Part of the problem is that so few government workers have military service is that they have no basis to question the fakers. The other part of the problem is that political correctness so permeates the civil service everyone is afraid to ask hard questions for fear of offending someone. The best part of this story is that it points out the overall lack of smarts in the bureaucratic managerial classes now working for the government.
I wish I was smart enough to think up a good con game that would get me hundreds of thousands of dollars!
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Another reason the Fed Govt is bankrupt
You scooped the WSJ by a couple of months. Glad they finally caught up.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304439804579208262999418146