Feds paid for fighting fake fires

Published October 2, 2014 9:00am ET



Federal employees working for a Bureau of Land Management program designed to fight wildfires logged hours for fighting conflagrations that hadn’t yet started and bought hundreds of thousands of dollars in gift cards using government funds, a government watchdog reports.

Disorganization within the federal fire-fighting program puts millions of dollars at risk for fraud, the Department of the Interior inspector general said in a report released Wednesday. Officials not only spend the program’s money in wasteful ways, but fail to track many of the purchases they do make.

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