https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-news/2017/08/investigation-navy-shipyard-wasted-21-million-building-off-the-books-police-force/slide/1/For the better part of a dozen years, a group of employees and managers at the Navy’s largest public shipyard operated what amounted to an unsanctioned, off-the-books police force, equipping it with illegally or improperly obtained weapons, vehicles and fuel, wasting an estimated $21 million in public funds in the process.
Those are the findings of an internal command-directed investigation performed by the Naval Sea Systems Command’s inspector general, which undertook an in-depth review of the case after federal prosecutors declined to file criminal charges.
The investigation, which was conducted in 2014, has not been previously disclosed. But to date, none of the shipyard officials involved in the enterprise have faced punishment or prosecution, partly because most of them opted to retire before the investigation began, and millions of dollars in unaccounted-for property remains missing.
The case has its origins, investigators say, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when agencies were flush with cash to spend on improving their security and few were inclined to question any spending that was ostensibly intended to protect federal facilities and employees.
In that environment, the officials in charge of a group of unarmed security guards, whose job was supposed to be patrolling the shipyard’s internal work areas, began beefing up the workforce and outfitting it with firearms, boats, law enforcement badges, vehicles (complete with fictitious license plates) and an armored personnel carrier that they emblazoned with the word “police.”
“These folks are not law enforcement, but they wanted to be, and all of their actions were done to become a law enforcement organization,” said Peter Lintner, the deputy director of investigations at NAVSEA. “The stunning thing is that this happened over the course of seven commanding officers, and not a single one of them put a stop to it or really even had any visibility on it. Everybody just thought, ‘Well, they’re the good guys. They’re the security department. They’re not going to do anything wrong.’ In actuality, they were doing everything wrong, and they knew it.”
Lintner, who said the investigation originated from whistleblower tips to an inspector general hotline, described the case in detail during a recent governmentwide gathering of hotline officials organized by the Defense Department’s inspector general. He did not specify which shipyard was involved, but materials gathered by investigators make clear that the facility in question is Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Va.
there's so much more at the article...
In that way, the security specialists allegedly obtained at least 92 vehicles and other equipment worth more than $4 million without any valid mission requirement — including a flatbed tractor-trailer to move the vehicles around. To this day, all of that property is unaccounted for, according to the IG’s office.
“When they got to the gate at FLETC, they were denied entrance because the plates weren’t any good — they’d made their own,” Lintner said. “So their solution was to back around the corner, put another valid government plate on from another vehicle, and they drove it right into FLETC.”
Gasoline presented another potential hurdle, since there was no clear way to finance and account for the fueling of vehicles the Navy didn’t technically own. But again, the security team found a solution. The shipyard had a valid work order with a fuel delivery company that regularly visited the base to replenish the yard’s gasoline-powered lighting devices, so the employees allegedly got the tanker trunk driver to also top off their vehicle fleet’s gas tanks on every visit.
The IG pointed to similar issues with the fleet of boats the team acquired, again, according to investigators, without any valid mission requirement. One such vessel — a high-speed interdiction boat — was bought for $150,000 with a government purchase card, and the team paid at least $206,000 more to tie it up at a nearby private marina instead of at the shipyard itself, where there was abundant dock space for small boats.
Overall, the IG estimated the enterprise spent $10.6 million on labor that had nothing to do with the security office’s mission and another $10.4 million on unnecessary law enforcement equipment.
Thus far, none of that money nor the missing vehicles and equipment has been recovered, and neither the Naval Criminal Investigative Service nor the U.S. Attorney has shown much of an interest in pursuing the case, Lintner said.
so yeah, either these guys are the greatest scam artists since Hogan's Heroes, or they're the next A-Team
