Federal employees charged millions of dollars for Internet dating, tailor-made suits, lingerie, lavish dinners and other questionable expenses to their government credit cards over a 15-month period, congressional auditors say...
Government employees defrauding the government? That's not a news story, that's a given! This sort of dreck has been going on for decades! It's just easier to catch in the Computer Age.
And I agree, it's infuriating. It's nothing on what Congresscritters and their staffs do with their junkets and earmarks, but it still ought to be stopped.
This may not be quite what it seems (anything that comes from the SF Chron throws up red flags for me).
When I was in, some bright boy figured he could save $5 by spending $50, and did away with our TDY travel advances by going to the government issued credit card. The travel advances/payments had been working well up to that point. Guess that's why we had to screw with it. There were rumors off and on that some of the high rollers in the CC companies were former mil (retired) and "helping" the program along, but these were unsubstantiated and I don't know if they were true or not.
Eventually, these cards became mandatory, and we were REQUIRED (i.e. ordered) to obtain one and REQUIRED to use it for certain expenses (even if we'd prefer to use our own credit card/cash and avoid this situation completely, costing the government nothing). I remember seeing the "you are hereby ordered" letter......This system was loaded with rules, and fraught with peril. The ironic thing was that the bill came to YOU, and YOU were responsible for paying it, no matter what you charged. It was charged to you, the individual, but if you charged something "wrong" you could be prosecuted. You were supposed to charge your meals; if you had a beer with your meal this could be "abuse." If you exceeded a daily amount, you could be flagged as abusing the card, even though your total TDY payment greatly exceeded the amount charged. You were supposed to use an Electronic Funds Transfer to pay it off as part of your voucher; if you came back from a long TDY or there was significant processing time, your name was flagged and put on a delinquent list (most sane commanders blew this off, unless the time period was huge). I had more problems with processing at merchants with this card than any I've ever privately owned. The admin portion could (and did) hurt some peoples' careers, even though they'd done nothing essentially wrong. Our shirt was always having to deal with some drama caused by this. Indeed, we went through several credit card companies so the program wasn't good for anybody.
There were cases of legitimate abuse -- give a 5 or 10K credit line to an 18 year old who's never had money with sketchy training/guidance and guess what ? There were horror stories of people using it for down payments on cars/gambling advances in Vegas, etc. But these were the exception and not the rule. Most people who ran afoul of the "law" did so unintentionally.
I have no doubt the program can and has been abused, but I think the numbers involve more technicalities than anything else. There probably are a few spectacular cases, but these are very much in the minority. Moreover, had we just left well enough alone, none of this would have occurred.
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God gives us free will; the statist tries to take it away
I got out before they screwed everything up, and I'm glad I did! My kids tell me it's an easy way to get in trouble without doing a thing wrong! If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it!!!!
The media does love anything with a negative attached, and rarely fail to add some inflation.
The finding for a number of the purchaces indicates the agencys could not "account for" the items purchased - which is far from saying they were stolen/misappropriated. Accounting for government property is another whole process, and could easily be the point of failure for many things.
There were some clearly inappropriate or fraudulent purchases cited, and yep, some government employees steal from theor employer - just as many employees of private sector employers.
Yeah....the other point is that (at least when I left) the individual (not the government) was responsible for paying the CC bill. Don't know if that's the case here, but it could be. If it is, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter what you're charging because you're the one paying for it.
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God gives us free will; the statist tries to take it away
That was true for the individual's CC. For an organizational CC, the buyer has to verify the bill, and it has to be approved by the supervisor, then to finance for payment.
There is absolutely no excuse for some of the cases cited, but there is a lot of room for mitigation in the GAO report - although, needless to say, the media doesn't include any comments to that effect.
Thanks, didn't know that. Sounds like the Government/Fed. Service cards are different than ours. Ours were Government Travel Cards (i.e. organizational cards), but we were individually billed and responsible for payment ourselves. Kinda the worst of both worlds.
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God gives us free will; the statist tries to take it away
Yea, all though I'm amazed by this, I must admit I'm not shocked. What will piss me off is if they don;t do something about it. And by that I mean, make an example, by termination and restitution of a few, quite a few of whom abused the privilege to use OUR money..
The one that really blows my mind, the one where the person bought lingerie for a jungle training course in Ecuador or whatever it was. UNREAL!
__________________ "My next door neighbors two dogs have created more shovel ready jobs then Obama has." - Gary Johnson
Thanks, Mad Hatter, Great link to the story...even better than the one I posted, earlier! Will they do anything about this? I doubt it! It will probably be sent to the government contractors files, to be comingled with the $400.00 hammers, and $600.00 toilet seats.
Yea, all though I'm amazed by this, I must admit I'm not shocked. What will piss me off is if they don;t do something about it. And by that I mean, make an example, by termination and restitution of a few, quite a few of whom abused the privilege to use OUR money..
The one that really blows my mind, the one where the person bought lingerie for a jungle training course in Ecuador or whatever it was. UNREAL!
I don't even think it was a military person. I think it was someone in an administrative position. I could however be wrong. Taint the first and won't be the last time. lol
__________________ "My next door neighbors two dogs have created more shovel ready jobs then Obama has." - Gary Johnson
Last edited by GlockMeister; 04-10-2008 at 03:42 AM.
I saw first hand the same thing TXplt is talking about. Except I had 2 government issued cards. 1 was a tdy or travel card and the other was a government procurement card. The first one had like a 10k limit or so and was loosely watched. If you charged something questionable on it then it would come back to you in a few months. They seemed to be reasonable about it though, the individual was required to pay it and then would be reimbursed by the gov.
The second card was a different thing all together. The first year or 2 I had it was under some new Navy wide plan to put all purchasing agents on the same program. It had a 100k limit (lol) and was only loosely looked at. Of course you wouldnt get one of these unless you were in a trusted position and each command only had one or 2 at most. Unfortunately the large purchasing ability of it became too much for some to resist. I know of one that purchased breast implants, another a harley and so on and on. Several people wound up serving some jail time, loosing their clearance, and their jobs, as they should. After a few years of this they clamped down big time on it and you had to have triple paperwork on practically everything and it was reviewed in detail every month. I would be shocked to hear that these types of cards are being abused given the level of scrutiny they now garner.
