A federal employee responsible for overseeing public housing projects stole more than $70,000 by conducting fraud using his work computer to obtain high-end electronics.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development employee used government resources to create pay stubs and identification cards for nonexistent department employees, whose identities he used to order high-end electronics on credit, according to a report by the department’s inspector general.
He then spent his days at work selling the items on Craigslist and negotiating with buyers using his federal email address.
The agency long knew that he had an “extensive history of poor work ethic, as well as attendance and leave issues,” but merely reassigned him to the mailroom rather than firing him.
After one vendor alone shipped more than $70,000 of goods that it never received payment for, it looked at its server logs and found that the fraudulent purchases were coming from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A fake government badge was found in plain sight on his desk, the inspector general said. The heavily-redacted report withheld the employee’s name.
Investigators determined that he had also stolen an unknown amount of goods from numerous other vendors.
The employee was one of many Housing and Urban Development employees who acted more like hardened criminals than bureaucrats in charge of a poverty program, according to reports obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Another employee was hired after being discharged from the military for misconduct, and a fake college degree was not caught by human resources personnel.
He was only caught after he received a promotion, and they noticed that he had misstated his start date at HUD to HUD employees.
Another housing project employee for years filed travel reimbursements for $70 taxi rides, which the department happily paid without receipts. The employee was actually paying a friend to take him to the airport, and said that “half” of his office knew that he was doing so.
Still another public housing project manager went on a French cruise and traveled to Egypt and Turkey with an executive of the real estate company who profited most from her project. The department learned of the relationship from a reporter, and that she had not disclosed the relationship or recused herself from business with the company. HUD management merely said they would “counsel” her.
Another HUD employee was repeatedly observed openly viewing pornography on his work computer. Colleagues said he liked viewing images of “white females” and even printed naked images on work computers.
When interviewed by investigators, the employee “refused to sign” a document advising him of his rights and then repeatedly tried to change the subject, lodging unrelated complaints about mismanagement of housing project money, the inspector general said.
He also claimed he did not remember his own personal email address.
The document indicates that he was in charge of some type of ethics enforcement in the office. An agent “suggested that since [he] was [redacted] he would probably know better than others what constitutes appropriate behavior in the workplace.”
Dozens of nude images were found on his computer, but the employee adopted a defiant tone with investigators, saying that he “maybe” recognizes some and “does not” recall others.
He then claimed he “gets it” and that “there is nothing like a reformed person.” After that, investigators found that he had given them a false password, blocking access to one of his drives.
Another housing project employee was loudly listening to music at his desk, and when a colleague came by to ask him to turn it down, she found that he was watching a video titled “Asian Breast Massage.”
He claimed that he had an interest in the art of breast massages and wanted to learn so that he could give massages to people in the office.
