Cristina Jackson punished for exposing a fraud
We talked about Darryl Lee Wright last year when he was charged with defrauding the government of hundreds of thousands of dollars in veterans’ benefits for his “disability” which resulted from hearing an explosion once while in Iraq. He parlayed the explosion into a Combat Action Badge and a Purple Heart along with some disability benefits and caregiver payments to his sister.
He was exposed by Cristina Jackson, a Federal employee, and of course, she became a target, not only of Wright, but also the agency that she worked for because she exposed the thief, according to Military.com;
Wright joined the Economic Development Administration, a job-promoting agency within the Commerce Department, in 2008. His absences quickly mounted, and he announced he was dealing with PTSD stemming from service in Iraq.
Jackson, the office’s administrative director, oversaw his attendance records.
Late in 2009, Wright asked to convert missed work into paid leave for “emergency” National Guard duty. The orders he provided were unsigned or didn’t have his name.
Jackson, who previously worked in administrative roles with the Navy and Army reserve, asked for more documentation. He told her to check with the Washington National Guard.
With permission from her boss, that’s what she did. The Guard determined Wright “purposely falsified Washington Military Department orders to defraud his civilian employer,” according to a December 2009 investigation report .
On top of all of that, Wright and his sister were racking up benefits from the VA and the Social Security Administration that totaled about 10 grand per month. Jackson’s investigation put an end to that.
Wright, 48, pleaded guilty to federal charges in February, more than six years after Jackson told her bosses that he had submitted fake National Guard orders to be paid for a week of missed work. He’s due to be sentenced in August. Through his lawyer he declined an interview request.
“Cristina Jackson’s willingness to come forward was critical to uncovering the truth,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David Reese Jennings said. “But for her actions, law enforcement would not have had what they needed to uncover the fraud.”
Despite the fact that she helped bust a thief who was defrauding the federal government, she has also been battling to keep her own job for more than six years. She should be a national hero.
Category: Politics
I retire from the federal government next year. The day can’t come fast enough.
Just remember to ride herd on OPM for your pension. They have plenty of mathematical surprises waiting for you.
Actually, I kind of misspoke about “retiring” from the gubmint.
I have maybe 6 years fed service so I’m not looking forward to too much of a retirement. But it will go nicely with my miiitary retirement.
Thanks for the advice though Jonn. I will definitely be watching those fuckers like a hawk. I have NOT been impressed with HR in the fed govt. Not at all. There is a real bias towards former miltary. Jealous I guess.
If you’re dealing with OPM, prepare to lawyer up. Those people at OPM are more crooked than the Mafia. They WILL try to screw you. Don’t let them do it.
When I ‘retired’ from 11 years with the VA, OPM doubled each deduction, primarily life insurance. Took better part of a year to get it fixed and then they refused to refund the difference. Their argument was if I had died, Mrs. HMC would have received double the amount she should have received. I pointed out that, by law, this was impossible. I wonder how this is possible. I mean, calculators the size of a loaf of bread and slide rules went out decades ago. One simply enters the info into a computer and ‘Presto’ it’s done. OPM? Count your fingers afterwards.
I never had a problem with my Army retirement. Every month I’m on the phone with OPM. My final pay with the Feds was triple that of my Army pay, but somehow I get a third of my Army pension from the Feds.
Ditto, Jonn. I’ve been retired from Navy now for 25 years. (Wow, where has time gone? I’ve actually been retired two years longer than I was on AD.) I have never, ever had an issue with retired military pay. And when I have a question about military pay, I have found them to be responsive. They actually seem to care about their people.
It cannot be a violation of the Privacy Act for a Government Supervisor in 1 agency to contact another Government Supervisor in another Government agency to verify the claim of PTSD being made by the individual.
It wasn’t a privacy act violation anyway, because this guy was making the statements all over the place that he had PTSD. His comments that he had the PTSD weren’t something he disclosed to a employer in confidence, but rather him bragging about it.
As an active duty member of a reserve unit over the years, I was regularly contacted to confirm orders, types of orders, length of orders, drill weekend duty, etc., by civilian companies. But, also by government agencies at various levels.
Usually, it was because they had certain benefits and entitlements they offered for types of orders the reservist would be on, i.e., in support of GWOT, or training.
Most of the time when it came to questioning order validity, it was from wives. lol.
Man, she must have scared the bejesus out of a bunch of righteous frauds!
Battling to keep her own job?
And I thought the private sector was bad. Every time things started going downhill, it was Bloody Thursday or Freakout Friday RIF time.
I am so glad I decided it was time to leave the work world and strike out on my own. Life is so much more peaceful now.
There is some justice here, in a sick way. It is this: a bureaucrat has now become a victim of her fellow bureaucrats. I read the whole article and it’s rather funny, what with one pencil-pusher pointing a finger at another and a cheat who was aggrieved and who won thousands in a settlement. What a mess.
Oh very sick. Pls. don’t label her a bureaucrat when you don’t even really know what all she does. She was actually helping this guy convert LWOP hrs to paid leave when she discovered that his supporting documents were fraudulent.
I read the original post, that’s it, now I’m driving to DC and throwing my CIB over the White House fence… maybe one day I’ll be Secretary of State. Actually, more than likely these days, I’ll be shot by the not so secret service.
Mine stays in a drawer with everything else.
Well, this administration does consider you a threat after all. So….
If we could organize and mobilize (both skills I don’t have) we could utilize social media to hound everyone involved with the persecution of this hero into permanent unemployment.
Sometimes, an enemy must be submitted to full on scorched earth.
The SJWs understand this and excel at it. The weak and stupid on our side claim we should “never sink to their level”. “Their level” works and is winning the cultural war.
$10,000 a month? Even a 100% VA disability is about $2,500 a month.
Where did it all come from?
I’d bet there’s some “home care” assistance involved in that, along with other payments.
Just more proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
As always, the lack of common sense and function in Uncle Sam’s world is beyond astounding.
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No good deed goes unpunished.
?????
And the way this administration is going, the AG will get that guy back his disability and get him out of jail, while ensuring she never works for a gummint agency ever again.
Anything that endangers the bureaucracy, especially from within, will be sought out and attacked, like a virus. Make something more efficient? Nope, fire that guy. Point out fraud? Nope, can’t have that. If we identify all the fraud, we’ll lose budget money for the fraud investigation department.
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