A former investigator for the federal agency that provides billions of dollars in aid to people around the world has been charged with falsifying documents integral to top secret background investigations.
Donald Lee Lerch Jr., a security specialist in Washington for the U.S. Agency for International Development, is accused of falsifying about 80 background checks for security clearances since last year. Lerch is expected to plead guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court before Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson, according to court documents.
Lerch, 38, of Hagerstown, is facing a maximum of five years in prison.
As part of his job, Lerch, reviewed requests for security clearances for USAID personnel, including requests for top secret clearances. He was to check the biographical information of the subjects against records for criminal history by checking with the FBI and local law enforcement agencies. He was also supposed to interview people to determine a subject’s trustworthiness, character and loyalty to the United States.
Typically, forms would be stamped with an official law enforcement agency stamp to verify that the check had been completed.
Beginning last summer, Lerch’s workload increased from about 10 cases each week to 35 cases a week, he told federal investigators. He received increased pressure from management to keep up with his caseload and his work performance evaluations went down because he couldn’t keep pace with the demand, he told investigators.
In November, began to “short cut” his background investigations, court documents said.
His scheme unraveled in April, after his boss discovered cut-out copies of FBI and Prince George’s County police verification stamps in a desk drawer belonging to Lerch. She found them while trying to find fingerprint cards of cases that originally had been assigned to Lerch but had been reassigned to her. Lerch’s bosses then found several background checks in which a copy of an FBI stamp — which indicated the subject had no criminal history — had been placed on the document with tape.
His bosses performed a check of 13 names that were reported to been approved by the FBI and found that none had actually been sent to the bureau.
It’s unclear how many of the subjects that Lerch approved had actual criminal histories that would have prevented them from working at the agency.
Lerch submitted a letter of resignation to his supervisor announcing he would resign the following month but did not show up afterward.
