Inserting phony numbers part of job for DOD workers

http://hamptonroads.com/2013/12/inserting-phony-numbers-part-job-dod-workers

Inserting phony numbers part of job for DOD workers
© December 2, 2013
By Scot J. Paltrow
Reuters
LETTERKENNY ARMY DEPOT, Pa.

Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career regularly inserting phony numbers in Department of Defense accounts.

Every month until she retired in 2011, she said, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon’s main accounting agency.

Using the data they received, Woodford and fellow DFAS accountants set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the U.S. Treasury’s – a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies.

And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from.