3 plead guilty to lax background checks of key federal workers
By: Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
March 3, 2009
A federal contractor has been sent to prison for two years and two of his colleagues are awaiting sentencing after they pleaded guilty to cutting corners on security-sensitive background checks for the federal government.
George Abraham will spend the next 27 months behind bars in a federal prison after he admitted to lying to government officials about the background checks he was supposed to be conducting on several federal employees and contractors. He’ll spend then three years under supervised release.
Special Agent Suzanne Weeks and Paul Higgins, another contractor, entered their own guilty pleas just a couple of hours after Abraham’s sentencing Friday.
The three worked independently, but their cases were remarkably similar. They were paid to dig into the backgrounds of dozens of employees and contractors.
Those employees and contractors had access to classified information, served in positions that affected national security and were often given high security clearance, court papers state.
As part of their jobs, Abraham, Weeks and Higgins were supposed to interview potential employees’ references and check records. Instead, the trio ignored interviews and documents for years, but told authorities that everything had checked out.
They were caught after other federal workers made routine follow-up calls to the original references. When the references said they had never been interviewed, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general was called in. The inspector general, in turn, brought in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“We take these cases very seriously because of the national security implications,” prosecutor Ellen Chubin Epstein said.
Personnel Management spokesman Mike Orenstein told The Examiner that his agency was “pleased” with the outcomes of the three investigations.
“We believe these decisions will serve as a strong deterrent to those who are entrusted with serving the public good from participating in these or similar activities,” Orenstein said.
Most of the employees who were given the incomplete background checks remain on the job, a source said.
Weeks is scheduled to be sentenced June 1; Higgins will be sentenced June 22.
