Posted on 08/15/2003 5:58:52 AM PDT by SLB
WASHINGTON, August 8--A female Marine Corps staff sergeant was convicted in June of using her Defense Department credit card to buy a car, a motorcycle, furniture, household goods--and a breast job, Defense Week has learned.
Staff Sergeant Sherry Pierre, an active duty Marine who worked for Marine Forces Reserve headquarters command in New Orleans, used her Pentagon plastic to rack up $129,709 in goods, services and upgrades to her physique, a command spokesman confirmed.
Pierre's previously unpublicized surgery may have given her a lift, but the tale is hardly uplifting. It is among the more egregious examples of a military employee abusing a government purchase card that is meant to increase efficiency, not waste. Her story illustrates a larger problem: A lack of management controls on nearly $7 billion in annual Pentagon credit-card purchases. The Pentagon has made strides to solve the problem, but many of the solutions are just now taking root.
Pierre's scheme transpired between 2000 and 2001, a period that, the Pentagon points out, pre-dates its major initiatives to rein in credit-card waste.
Pierre's rip-off was detected by the experimental use of data-mining techniques, which can detect telltale trends and anomalies in large databases. But these monitoring methods are only now being made part of the military's regular oversight of its credit-card purchases. So similar cases may not have come to light-though they soon could be unearthed as the technique is more widely used.
"The fraudulent transactions identified occurred during fiscal 2000 and 2001," said Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman. "At that time, DOD did not have the tools necessary to screen all purchase-card transactions to identify those that carry a high risk for potentially inappropriate or fraudulent activity. The department has prototyped and is now expanding a data-mining capability to screen for and identify high-risk transactions for subsequent investigation to be exported across DOD."
Irwin added that "the DOD has the lowest level of fraud among large institutional organizations that use the purchase-card approach-[and] we are proud of that. ... These isolated incidents will be dealt with swiftly and prosecuted to the full extent of the law."
On June 17, Pierre was found guilty of stealing from the government. She received 14 months confinement, a bad-conduct discharge, a reduction in her enlisted grade (from E-6 to E-3) and a fine of $30,000, said Capt. Jeff Pool, spokesman for her employer, Marine Forces Reserve.
Most government credit cards can be used for "micro-purchases"--or acquisitions worth less than $2,500. But Pierre was authorized to buy "force-level" goods and services-meaning she was not limited by the usual ceiling as she spent money on big-ticket items for the command, Pool said.
"It is clear that the oversight mechanisms that were in place during that period broke down," Pool said. “The bottom line is the criminals were caught, tried and convicted, and Marine Forces Reserve has thoroughly reviewed and implemented a more stringent system of checks and balances to prevent something like this from happening in the future."
A June inspector general’s report mentioned Pierre’s case, but not her name, and called her breast lift “surgical enhancements.” The report said Pierre's spending was a fraction of the $5 million in "potentially fraudulent or inappropriate transactions" uncovered by data mining.
The inspector general, the General Accounting Office and news organizations have highlighted a systemic lack of management control over how the credit cards are used in the Defense Department. The inspector general’s June report says full implementation of solutions planned by the Pentagon “should assist in reducing the number of questionable purchase-card transactions. …”
The August 11 issue of Defense Week will carry a fuller examination of this topic.
What the heck did we abolish E-1 and E-2 for active duty criminals ??? "Bust" her back to E-1, set her in the DB barracks at Ft Levenworth and let her figure out which rack she really likes !
That's as clean as I can make my response SLB !!
Stay Safe !
Much cleaner than the real responses from the soldiers I work with. Pretty colorful, but most are disappointed they did not include pictures of the evidence in the article.
Red
Stay Safe !
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