These people steal and there are no consequences? Does that surprise anyone at all? It sure doesn't surprise me. Some of the numbers are a little bit shocking but the fact that government employees are robbing us blind is not shocking at all. And this is only the stuff they know about. You can bet there are some who are a little smarter and have figured out how not to get caught.
Why do you think the government wants us to give and give and give? So they can take and take and take.
While this is dead wrong and the people should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, this is nothing compared to the kick backs and other goodies senators and congressmen get. Those guys go in rich and come out more rich.
Would you ever consider stealing from your job? I don't need anything that bad. I do need my job though, and sure as hell, I wouldn't get off with... well, nothing, like these federal employees do. My boss would can me in a minute for stealing a big screen tv or paying my mortgage with the company credit card. And he should, because it is wrong.
Has the area between right and wrong become so gray that people can justify stealing from their employer? I'm going to go out on a limb here, if you are in a position to be carrying a government credit card you probably aren't making minimum wage, so justifying stealing as a portion of your salary is a load of crap. Doing because "everyone else does it" is also a load of crap. Stealing is wrong no matter how you do it but stealing from the taxpayers is just downright despicable...
Eighteen employees of the Federal Protective Service spent more than $100,000 in government funds for clothing and flat-screen TVs, gym memberships and tuition payments, according to a General Services Administration inspector general report, but none has faced disciplinary action.
Most employees caught stealing from a company would expect to be fired, forced to return what they took or worse. But a group of government employees accused of going on a massive shopping spree with taxpayer money have yet to face any disciplinary action.
During an 18-month period while the Federal Protective Service was moved from the General Services Administration to the Department of Homeland Security, employees spent thousands of government dollars on everything from clothing and flat-screen TVs to gym memberships and tuition payments, according to the General Services Administration inspector general's office.
But two referrals to federal prosecutors have resulted in no criminal charges in the case, The Washington Times reported Monday.
Investigators said the 21 employees hid more than $100,000 worth of "unauthorized" purchases made with government cards in 2003 and 2004 by not logging them into the computer system that processes the agency's financial transactions.
After the findings of the five-year investigation into the matter were revealed in September, three employees resigned, four retired and five employees faced possible reprimand. No action was taken against nine others, the Times reported.
The abuse of government charge cards is hardly a new problem.
A March 2008 report issued by Government Accountability Office estimated that “nearly 41 percent” of purchase card transactions made from July 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006 failed to meet “basic internal control standards.”
One cardholder embezzle more than $642,000 over 6 years from the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service firefighting fund “for personal expenditures, such as gambling, car and mortgage payments” but wasn’t caught until a whistleblower turned her in, the GAO report said.
That cardholder was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of more than $642,000.
In addition, the report said agencies were unable to locate 458 of the 1,058 expensed items the GAO had selected for testing, totaling over $1.8 million in missing goods like “computer servers, laptop computers, iPods, and digital cameras.”
Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste, says more needs to be done to stop this kind of abuse.
"According to the report the FBS workers have absolutely had no consequences. And by consequences I mean punitive but also restitution,” Paige told FoxNews.com. “I don’t know why Congress is not moving to force them to claw the money back. There should be a claw back measure for sure when people have transgressed in this kind of a way whether it rises to the level of criminal prosecution or not."
Paige said since the last GAO report on the issue there’s been an “explosion” in the number of government purchase cards, with 300,000 federal employees currently carrying them. By turning a blind eye when they are abused, she says, the government is inviting more of the behavior.
“If the worst you get is not even a slap on the wrist, you’re not made to pay the money back, you don’t have your name published, you don’t get drummed out of your job, if there are no consequences for this behavior, you’re going to see more and more of it,” Paige said.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment over the phone and has not yet responded to emails from FoxNews.com regarding this issue.
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