From the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore:
U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Lynn Carol Williams, age 56, of Middle River, Maryland today to six months in prison, followed by six months of home detention with electronic monitoring as part of three years of supervised release, for wire fraud in connection with a scheme to misuse the Freestate Challenge Academy corporate purchasing card, causing losses of more than $107,000. Freestate Challenge Academy is a Maryland National Guard program located at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Judge Bennett also ordered Williams to pay restitution of $107,493.
The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Stephen E. Vogt of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Special Agent in Charge Robert Craig of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service – Mid-Atlantic Field Office and Chief Chip Honan of the Aberdeen Proving Ground Police Department.
According to her plea agreement, from October 2007, through February 2011, Williams worked as an administrative aide at Freestate Challenge Academy, located at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Williams was authorized to use the Academy’s corporate credit card to make purchases for the Academy, and was required to prepare a monthly expense report, which included the purchasing card billing statement, original receipts, copies of the approved requisition forms, and a log of activity on the purchasing card. Once her supervisor approved the expense report, it was forwarded to the State of Maryland Military Department, which paid the account balance on the corporate purchasing card.
Williams admitted that from February 2008, through October 2010, she used the corporate credit card to buy gift cards and to purchase items over the internet for her personal use. For example, on May 18, 2010, Williams used the corporate credit card to purchase six gift cards, which she then used to pay for two airline tickets for her and a friend to travel to Los Angeles, California. To conceal her fraud, Williams prepared false logs of the card activity and used her work computer to prepare fictitious receipts, to give the impression she was using the card to make legitimate purchases on behalf of the program, such as for office supplies, snacks for program participants and other legitimate items.
United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein praised the FBI, Defense Criminal Investigative Service and Aberdeen Proving Ground Police for their work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Joyce K. McDonald, who prosecuted the case.
Sheila Dixon ,,,,Rides Again!!!!!!!!!
Gosh…last year a gang of maintenance engineers were charged with stealing hundreds of thousands worth of dollars of metal including copper over multiple years some of which would have required digging it out of the ground and hauling away tons of aluminum and nobody noticed and now this lady charges over $100,000 over a couple years and nobody checks. I’m starting to notice a trend here and it doesn’t look good for the taxpayers.
The government uses “maintenance engineer” to describe a very different position than private industry’s slang for “janitor”, they actually need engineering degrees and work in an office. The copper thieves were electricians.
Point taken, but it was very hard to fathom how so little oversight is possible – hours and hours at a time to dig up copper and thousands of pounds of aluminum driven right out the door and nobody signs for anything or notices a bunch of electricians routinely missing and all coming back with shovels. I know that’s exaggerated but still you’d think security at a military base would be a bit tighter than that. Apparently nobody gets in without scrutiny but anything walks out the door and nobody cares.
Management can be slack in the government. The lucky manager is one who hires self starting individuals with a touch of discipline. Or they can be stupid. Take your pick. My manager’s life is easier because the people that work for him fill in the void of his lack of discipline and lack of customer support. I told him about seven years ago that the primary function of management is to enable his employees to perform work, and if he makes any effort to inhibit work , he’s not doing his job. He replied that I had high expectations of management. A few years later I repeated the remark when we were discussing the way another manager was adversely impacting her employees. At that time he looked at me and said “Exactly – and I hope you’re not talking about me.”
We have several government credit cards in our office (aka “IMPAC” cards) and I can’t ever imagine anything like this happening. We have multiple levels of checks and balances that would make this kind of scam impossible to pull off. This must have been the worst of the worst oversight.