The government watchdog for the Department of Veterans Affairs says a top official in Philadelphia misused her position by convincing other senior officials to attend a party at her home, where the wife of a subordinate would charge them to conduct “psychic readings.”
The VA’s Office of Inspector General said Lucy Filipov, assistant director of the Philadelphia VA, learned that Gary Hodge’s wife was a psychic in 2014. By April of last year, she started asking a small group of VA officials whether they would want to meet at her house to have her conduct psychic readings.
Hodge is the manager of the VA’s Pension Management Center, and he has been wrapped up in his own scandals. Hodge was implicated as a key official who helped the Philadelphia office manipulate wait-time data for veterans.
Hodge was later promoted anyway, just hours after the OIG found he was an integral part of the scheme to delay healthcare access for these veterans.
In late April, Filipov emailed a group of VA officials and said, “I have a medium coming to my house Friday night, June 6th. It’s the wife of someone I work with.” She was referring to Hodge and his wife.
Hodge’s wife said she would conduct personal readings for $35 as long as six people agreed, and Filipov started pushing VA officials to attend. “We had to guaranty [sic] a minimum of 6 but I think we have those numbers,” she said to other senior VA officials.
But the OIG said these activities went too far, as they inappropriately put pressure on her subordinates to show up.
“We found that Ms. Filipov misused her position when she instructed a subordinate to reach out to the spouse to make preliminary arrangements, such as gather details, number of attendees, and prices; improperly endorsed the services of the spouse when she used her VA-assigned email, which contained her position title, to email to her personal friends; and invited subordinates to attend a gathering at her home for a $35 fee to be paid to the spouse for her services,” the OIG report said.
“As a senior leader, she is held to a higher standard and should set the tone for her subordinates to follow, and establishing personal relationships with a select group of employees within her chain of authority gives the appearance of preference for those few employees,” it added.
The report recommended that the VA take steps to explore “appropriate administrative action” against Filipov, and that Filipov should receive “refresher ethics training.”
While Filipov told the OIG that she invited her “friends” to the party, her actions may have created an appearance of preferential treatment for some VA employees. It also seemed to doubt that those invited were actually her “friends” at all.
“[W]e found that her subordinates who attended the function did not stay to socialize but instead left her home immediately after their readings concluded,” the report said. “One employee told us he ensured he had his reading first, as he knew the readings were long and did not want to stay too late. Others ‘bickered’ about their place in line, because they didn’t want to be there too late either.”
“This report is yet another example of Philadelphia VA Regional Office officials exhibiting horrible judgment,” said House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla.
He also said the VA continues to ignore these pressing problems with its workforce. “So far, VA has been unwilling to take this commonsense step in one case after another, creating the impression that the department is more interested in defending the dysfunctional civil-service status quo than actually reforming itself,” he said.
The same OIG report noted that Hodge failed to report his wife’s income on government forms he’s required to fill out, and also didn’t report her income on his taxes in 2012 and 2013.
“We made a criminal referral of the false statements to the U.S. Department of Justice, but they declined to criminally prosecute in favor of administrative actions,” the report said.
