A federal employee used $60,000 in taxpayer funds to buy Armani, Louis Vuitton, and a Disneyland vacation for her personal use, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is supposed to be an advocate for victims of workplace employment discrimination, but the documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that at least one of its employees had been living quite well using money that was supposed to fund the agency’s programs.
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The Philadelphia EEOC office began buying American Express gift cards and paying contractors with them, apparently so the contractors couldn’t run up limitless bills. That action was taken following a 2012 incident in which a contractor used a commission credit card to run up a huge bill of unauthorized charges.
The employee, whose name was redacted but who had worked at the commission for 22 years, stole cards worth $3,000 apiece over a period of two years, totaling $60,000, and no one at the commission noticed.
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It was only when an outside accounting firm was hired to conduct a routine audit that it was discovered that the commission was paying contractors in gift cards, and that there was little or no documentation for what was being bought.
American Express records showed, however, that the cards were used at the luxury clothing retailers and for vacations. Resort staff confirmed that the employee was the one who had stayed there using the gift cards, according to a report by the commission’s inspector general.
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The inspector general secured a taped confession from the employee. But even after that, the federal government did not appear particularly concerned.
The inspector general confronted her on Nov. 14, 2013, more than three months after the accounting firm exposed the gift card issue. She was placed on paid leave and was still on it at the time the inspector general’s report was published on March 26, 2014.
The commission brought its evidence to the Department of Justice, but the federal government declined to prosecute her for stealing from it. (She was later charged by Philadelphia city prosecutors.)
The commission redacted the employee’s name from the inspector general’s report released to the Examiner, saying the FOIA “exempts public identification of individuals currently employed in the federal government which could conceivably subject them to harassment or annoyance.”
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Commission spokesman Joseph J. Olivares said the employee was terminated. He would not say how many months she was on paid leave, or why the agency was protecting someone who stole from it by withholding her name.
The U.S. Attorney’s office did not respond to a question about why the Department of Justice declined to prosecute the woman.
