Work for the EPA! Stay Home and Get Paid to Do Nothing—Or Show Up at the Office and Watch Porn All Day

Allan Williams, the Deputy
Assistant Inspector General for Investigations, is testifying for
the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today about
cases of employee misconduct at the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). Some of the stories he shares in his
prepared testimony are pretty outrageous.

Much of the testimony is devoted to the case of John Beale, who
last year was sentenced to 32 months in prison for defrauding the
EPA of about $900,000 in compensation. Among other offenses, Beale
didn’t show up at work for two and a half years—but continued to
collect a paycheck while telling people that he was off
working as a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Williams reports that Beale’s supervisor believed he was a CIA
spook, but never bothered to perform basic due diligence, like
asking for any evidence to substantiate his story. The unnamed
senior executive “allowed Mr. Beale to carry
out—unchecked—extensive time-and-attendance and travel voucher
fraud,” the testimony says. Basically, Beale said he worked for the
CIA, didn’t show up for years, collected a paycheck and more than
$180,000 in travel vouchers, and no one asked any questions.

And, as Williams reports, Beale’s is not the only case in which
an employee was allowed to bilk the agency while not showing up.
Another unnamed manager noted in the testimony allowed an employee
“not to report for duty for several years.” During that time, the
manager entered fraudulent attendance records allowing the employee
to be paid in excess of $500,000. Worse still was that, while this
was happening, the manager “authored and approved exemplary
performance appraisals that resulted in a cash award for the absent
employee.” Call it a fraud bonus.

Another story notes an employee who worked from home for “more
than 20 years [!!!!!] with very little substantive work product to
show during this time.” Telework is great—in fact, I’m writing this
post from home. But it probably ought to involve, you know, some
actual work every now and then. 

Of course, coming into the office doesn’t necessarily result in
productivity either. Another investigation noted in Williams
testimony describes an employee alleged to have stored thousands of
pornographic files on office network drives shared with EPA
colleagues. (I suppose you wouldn’t want your pals at the office to
miss out on any of the fun.) When an Inspector General special
agent showed up at the office to interview the employee, the
staffer was apparently in midst of watching porn. “The special
agent witnessed the employee actively viewing pornography on his
government-issued computer.” The employee then admitted to spending
“on average, between two and six hours per day viewing pornography
while at work.” A follow-up investigation found that the employee
had viewed more than 7,000 porn files while at the office. This
employee
still works at the EPA.