Post by blackcatmagic on Nov 17, 2014 20:01:55 GMT -6
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fabian Barrera found a way to make fast cash in the Texas National Guard, earning roughly $181,000 for claiming to have steered 119 potential recruits to join the military. But the bonuses were ill-gotten because the former captain never actually referred any of them.
Barrera's case, which ended last month with a prison sentence of at least three years, is part of what Justice Department lawyers describe as a recurring pattern of corruption that spans a broad cross section of the military.
In a period when the nation has spent freely to support wars on multiple fronts, prosecutors have found plentiful targets: defendants who bill for services they do not provide, those who steer lucrative contracts to select business partners and those who use bribes to game a vast military enterprise.
Despite numerous cases that have produced long prison sentences, the problems have continued abroad and at home with a frequency that law enforcement officials consider troubling.
"The schemes we see really run the gamut from relatively small bribes paid to somebody in Afghanistan to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of contracts being steered in the direction of a favored company who's paying bribes," Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said in an interview.
In the past few months alone, four retired and one active-duty Army National Guard officials were charged in a complex bribery and kickback scheme involving the awarding of contracts for marketing and promotional material, and a trucking company driver pleaded guilty to bribing military base employees in Georgia to obtain freight shipments — often weapons which required satellite tracking — to transport to the West Coast.
Barrera's case, which ended last month with a prison sentence of at least three years, is part of what Justice Department lawyers describe as a recurring pattern of corruption that spans a broad cross section of the military.
In a period when the nation has spent freely to support wars on multiple fronts, prosecutors have found plentiful targets: defendants who bill for services they do not provide, those who steer lucrative contracts to select business partners and those who use bribes to game a vast military enterprise.
Despite numerous cases that have produced long prison sentences, the problems have continued abroad and at home with a frequency that law enforcement officials consider troubling.
"The schemes we see really run the gamut from relatively small bribes paid to somebody in Afghanistan to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of contracts being steered in the direction of a favored company who's paying bribes," Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, said in an interview.
In the past few months alone, four retired and one active-duty Army National Guard officials were charged in a complex bribery and kickback scheme involving the awarding of contracts for marketing and promotional material, and a trucking company driver pleaded guilty to bribing military base employees in Georgia to obtain freight shipments — often weapons which required satellite tracking — to transport to the West Coast.
So.....If these people do it, it's wrong. But if congress does it, NO ONE BATS AN EYE. Oh the hypocrisy.
Defense contractor Leonard Francis was arrested in San Diego last year on charges that he offered luxury travel, prostitutes and other bribes to Navy officers in exchange for confidential information, including ship routes. Prosecutors say he used that information to overbill the Navy for port services in Asia in one of the biggest Navy bribery schemes in years. Ethan Posner, a lawyer for Francis, declined comment.
Seriously this should be very concerning. I have said for years the military is broken. There has been a break down of honor and discipline. Stuff like this proves it more and more. Why don't we just post our nation's secrets on facebook while we are at it.
"We just were not equipped to do sufficient oversight and monitoring on the front end, and we didn't have sufficient accountability mechanisms on the back end, which led to enormous problems," said Laura Dickinson, a national security law professor at George Washington University.
There are little benefits to severing your country other than the pleasure of doing so. You are owned property and yes it's in the fine print. Maybe if the military treated it's members like people, and paid them better too, incidences like this might decrease.