Contractor gets 6 years for Pentagon fraud

Source: Bloomberg News


A contractor who pleaded guilty to bilking the Pentagon out of more than $20 million during a nine-year fraudulent billing scheme was sentenced Monday to six years in prison and ordered to repay $15.5 million.

Charlene Corley, 48, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Margaret B. Seymour in Columbia, S.C. Corley also was ordered to serve three years of court-supervised release.

Among the Defense Department payments made to Corley, co-owner of a South Carolina parts distributor, was $998,798 for shipping two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas; $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq; and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Pentagon records show.

Prosecutors said in court papers the money was used to buy four beach houses; custom jewelry; vacations to Hawaii, Alaska and the Caribbean; plastic surgery; and "high-end automobiles made by Mercedes and Lexus."

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pentagon-billing3-2009mar03,0,2136365.story

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She ran this scheme for nine years during which time there was no one in the Pentagon who could figure out that two nineteen cent washers shouldn't cost a million dollars.

jeez, in California you can get life for stealing a pizza three times. I guess if you're a really big thief (like a CEO) you get little, if any punishment.

The numbers should be staggering. And why doesn't this compute to our under-supplied soldiers' risk of death going up?

Designed to expidite shipments to war zones. Obviously these charges should have thrown a red flag (or maybe they did, it just took 9 years for the IG to get to the case!). Unfortunately what this means is someone will come up with even more paperwork / red tape that a government employee will have to fill out to order something. What they need to do is close these loopholes and audit more.

Part of the problem with government purchasing is the lag time between needing a product and it actually arriving. If you spec a system that requires a xyz part, and you order it, most likely it will take 2-4 months before you actually have it. This is an incredibly poor system design. It causes waste because you have to plan far in advance, and you might order things you dont end up using because the requirements changed in the mean time!

Dont even get me started on the budget process.. If a division's budget isn't already spent half way through the year, they LOSE their money. All this promotes is wasteful spending just so you dont lose your money.

Is six years worth five million dollars? Some would say most definitely...

are the morans in the Pentagon who paid these bills? Shipping costs??? Are you kidding me?

Sounds as though the Pentagon needs a new accounting system and new people to run it.