Senior EPA Official Steals Millions from Taxpayers
14WednesdayMay 2014
Posted by ashleycherish in EPA, Government, US News
Have you ever awakened in the morning dreading another monotonous day at a job that you hate? Have you ever fantasized about faking a sudden illness, taking a personal day—or how about a personal year?
Maybe book a flight to Bermuda and spend a few months eating pineapple and getting massages on the beach? Or perhaps better yet, tell your boss you’re a CIA spook on a top-secret mission, so you won’t be showing up at the office for some indeterminate length of time.
Chances are, these are just idle fantasies that you quickly snap out of as you blink your way back into reality… unless, of course, you work for the US Government where you might just get away with it.
EPA Hoodwinked by Its Highest Paid Climate Specialist
Senior policy advisor John C. Beale of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation pulled off a million dollar con in which he found a fix for his career doldrums by convincing his bosses that he was a top-secret CIA operative.
This required him to be out of the office for extended periods of time—claiming to be traveling the globe on clandestine missions in the interest of homeland security.
Yes, this EPA official was vicariously acting out some sort of James Bond fantasy instead of going to work—and getting paid for it.1 He occupied his time taking lavish vacations on the government’s dime.
Beale took 33 airplane trips between 2003 and 2011, costing the government $266,190. On 70 percent of those, he traveled first class and stayed in five-star hotels, traveled by limo, and charged more than twice the government’s allowed per diem limit.
Between vacations, he would just putter around his Northern Virginia home doing pretty much nothing at all—and certainly not working. Beale told one shameless lie after another.
For example, in order to be granted a handicap parking space, he claimed to have contracted malaria in Vietnam. However, not only did he never have malaria, he never served in Vietnam!2 How long would you guess he got away with this fraudulent scheme—a month? A year? Try two decades!
Justice, After a 20 Year Long Con…
For well over 10 years and possibly closer to 20, Beale was able to collect his salary—as well as his regular bonuses—while performing almost no work, bilking the government out of close to a million dollars.
Court documents trace his fabrications back through 2000, but additional evidence suggests he may have been lying and manipulating as far back as 1989.
The man was no slouch. A graduate of NYU and Princeton, Beale was making $206,000 a year, making him the highest paid official at the EPA—including the administrator. Pulling off such an elaborate scheme on such a massive scale is quite complicated and requires the skills of a master con. As Michelle Cottle writes in the Daily Beast:3
http://theresistanceunited.com/2014/05/14/senior-epa-official-steals-millions-from-taxpayers/
