The WaPo reports:
Over the past 12 years, John C. Beale was often away from his job as a high-level staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency. He cultivated an air of mystery and explained his lengthy absences by telling his bosses that he was doing top-secret work, including for the CIA.
For years, apparently, no one checked.
Now, Beale is charged with allegedly stealing nearly $900,000 from the EPA by receiving pay and bonuses he did not deserve. He faces up to three years in prison.
Beale, 64, who was a senior policy adviser in the Office of Air and Radiation, is expected to plead guilty at a hearing scheduled for Monday at U.S. District Court in Washington.
“This is a situation where one individual went to great lengths to deceive and defraud the U.S. government,” said EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson.
Just think, the fact that McCarthy’s management style allowed this to happen was no impediment to advancing her career.
Sweep it under the rug management. Only a very lax management would allow someone to pull that scam for years, but after all, it isn’t their money.
So, McCarthy suspects fraud, alerts investigators, and then forces Beale to retire? It has the aroma of an amateurish attempt to protect the EPA from (another) scandal (by disassociating Beale from the agency), as well as malfeasance and maybe being a criminal accessory. And the other supervisors, were they simply fools and ignoramuses that they accepted Beale’s story of working for another agency? Corruption and incompetence abounds. This is the now all-powerful agency that purports to tell us about science and how to live our lives.
“This is a situation where one individual went to great lengths to deceive and defraud the U.S. government,” said EPA spokeswoman [ … ]”
That would likely convict the entire executive of the EPA.