Government Geometry
August 17th, 2007If you’re laundering money or perpetrating fraud in today’s age, you’re bound to get caught eventually, and that was true of these women, but it’s still rather disheartening to hear about how easy it is to scam the American government.
A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, U.S. officials said. The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show. The owners of C&D Distributors in Lexington, South Carolina — twin sisters — exploited a flaw in an automated Defense Department purchasing system: bills for shipping to combat areas or U.S. bases that were labeled “priority'’ were usually paid automatically, said Cynthia Stroot, a Pentagon investigator.
C&D and two of its officials were barred in December from receiving federal contracts. Today, a federal judge in Columbia, South Carolina, accepted the guilty plea of the company and one sister, Charlene Corley, to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder money, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McDonald said. Corley, 46, was fined $750,000. She faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on each count and will be sentenced soon, McDonald said in a telephone interview from Columbia. Stroot said her sibling died last year.
Ask yourself, Dear Reader — if the Pentagon can be milked as it naps by twin sisters and their ninety cent washers, what can al-Qaeda do in the night? What can North Korea do? What can Iran do? It’s unacceptable, someone should lose their job over it and then be barred from lobbying. Our government’s heart finds shape at the Pentagon and our business’ heart finds shape in the Iron Triangle — and both of them need to be re-shaped.