Author Topic: Surreal: EPA's Leading Climate Change Expert Pleads Guilty to Elaborate Fraud  (Read 508 times)

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Offline happyg

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And the fraud didn't even have anything to do with global warming! (Rimshot). Seriously, though, NBC News' Monday report on the misconduct of former EPA official John Beale is must be read to be believed. Honestly, if the following details didn't involve a lazy, greedy congenital liar swindling taxpayers out of nearly a million dollars over more than a decade of abuse, they'd be laugh-out-loud funny. Alas, it's all true, so indignation is the only proper response:
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The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors. John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade, will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday. In a newly filed sentencing memo, prosecutors said that his lies were a "crime of massive proportion" that were “offensive” to those who actually do dangerous work for the CIA. Beale’s lawyer, while acknowledging his guilt, has asked for leniency and offered a psychological explanation for the climate expert’s bizarre tales.
If you're interested in Beale's psychobabble defense -- courtesy of his therapist (yes, really) -- feel free to click through. The whole "woe is me" routine leaves me profoundly unmoved, however, so let's toggle ahead to more insane morsels from the article:
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Two new reports by the EPA inspector general’s office conclude that top officials at the agency “enabled” Beale by failing to verify any of his phony cover stories about CIA work, and failing to check on hundreds of thousands of dollars paid him in undeserved bonuses and travel expenses -- including first-class trips to London where he stayed at five-star hotels and racked up thousands in bills for limos and taxis...To explain his long absences, Beale told agency officials -- including McCarthy -- that he was engaged in intelligence work for the CIA, either at agency headquarters or in Pakistan. At one point he claimed to be urgently needed in Pakistan because the Taliban was torturing his CIA replacement, according to Sullivan...In fact, Beale had no relationship with the CIA at all. Sullivan, the EPA investigator, said he confirmed Beale didn’t even have a security clearance. He spent much of the time he was purportedly working for the CIA at his Northern Virginia home riding bikes, doing housework and reading books, or at a vacation house on Cape Cod. “He’s never been to Langley (the CIA’s Virginia headquarters),” said Sullivan. “The CIA has no record of him ever walking through the door.”

More of the article at link: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/12/17/surreal-epas-leading-climate-change-expert-pleads-guilty-to-elaborate-fraud-n1764063?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

Oceander

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Here's the bit about his psychological defense:

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Beale’s lawyer, while acknowledging his guilt, has asked for leniency and offered a psychological explanation for the climate expert’s bizarre tales.

“With the help of his therapist,” wrote attorney John Kern, “Mr. Beale has come to recognize that, beyond the motive of greed, his theft and deception were animated by a highly self-destructive and dysfunctional need to engage in excessively reckless, risky behavior.” Kern also said Beale was driven “to manipulate those around him through the fabrication of grandiose narratives … that are fueled by his insecurities.”

The two sentencing memos, along with documents obtained by NBC News, offer new details about what some officials describe as one of the most audacious, and creative, federal frauds they have ever encountered.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 04:34:11 pm by Oceander »