Operator accused of selling Federal Reserve cell phones to friends
By: Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
October 18, 2009
A former Federal Reserve System switchboard operator was charged with stealing and selling government cell phones to friends who then racked up tens of thousands of dollars in airtime charges, court documents said.
Christina M. Allen, who worked at the central bank headquarters in Washington, was charged with theft of government property, trafficking in unauthorized access devices and tampering with witness testimony. She faces a sentence of more than to 20 years if convicted.
Prosecutors said the thefts occurred from November 2006 to September 2007 while Allen worked for the Federal Reserve Board's Information Technology Division, answering the switchboard and executive phones, running the fax machines and monitoring conference calls.
The criminal investigation began when the IT Division discovered telephones were missing and believed to be stolen because the board had been had been paying for unauthorized telephone service charges from Verizon, Cingular and T-Mobile.
As an operator for the division of information technology, Allen had unfettered access to the phones because her workstation was next to the inventory, prosecutors said.
Allen is accused of making off with at least 10 cell phones and selling them for as much as $250 each. Sometimes she traded the phones for services, prosecutors said, such as the time she gave them to her hairdresser in exchange for discounts for hairstyles for herself and her daughter.
The phones were equipped with Federal Reserve Board identification and serial numbers, which caused service providers such as Cingular, T-Mobile and Verizon to sent the invoices back to the Federal Reserve Board.
Some of the people who bought the stolen phones racked up phone bills of more than $20,000, which were paid by the Federal Reserve, according to court documents.
When federal investigators began looking into the missing cell phones, they traced the phones back to the users in Prince George's County.
In August 2008, when investigators began closing in, Allen tried to "corruptly persuade" one woman into falsely testifying before a grand jury that the woman received the phones from a former Federal Reserve Board employee who had died a month earlier, according to court documents.
Earlier this year, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was a victim of a different kind of theft. He was one of hundreds of victims of a local identity fraud ring that stole more than $2.1 million from individuals and banks.
