The Office of the Inspector General has recovered more than $2.4 million in taxpayer money stolen by federal employees from 2010 to 2014 to fill up their personal gas tanks. While taking back the illicitly taken fuel money is a positive sign, that sum may just be a drop in the bucket compared to the millions and millions more that officials and bureaucrats defraud Uncle Sam out of every year.
For example, one employee, Bobby Bennett Harris of Arlington National Cemetery, had access to two taxpayer-funded fuel cards. He managed to chalk up $5,354 in fraudulent charges before getting caught recently and ordered to pay back the government. And that is nothing compared to the worst case. In 2010, a married couple ran up $300,000 before the wife was convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, and theft. The judge sentenced her to 84 months in jail.
Those in the justice world got lucky in these cases, however. Few fraudsters are ever caught — and given that the government has issued nearly 600,000 federal fuel cards, there are certainly many, many more who get away scot-free than those who are discovered.
“It’s difficult to prove,” Allan Bachman, education manager at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, told Watchdog.org. “Unless you look at every little charge and do mileage estimates on every vehicle and how many miles per gallon they get and how many miles per gallon were actually expended, then you’re in deep weeds.”
Fortunately, technology is making it a bit easy to catch the cheats. Most legitimate gas purchases to fill up government cars follow a distinct pattern. So by putting better tracking processes in place, watchdogs should be able to figure out who is trying to game the system. But it’s still an uphill battle and the abuse will continue to be as big as the government bureaucracy that enables it is. Fewer fuel cards will led to fewer fraud cases.
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