To Succeed At EPA: Watch Tons Of Porn, (Don't) Work From Home, Or Pretend You're A Secret Agent
from the my-uncle-made-$1000000-from-home-using-this-SIMPLE-TRICK! dept
The new get-rich-quick-scheme is this: go to work for the US government.
Or rather, go to "work" for the US government.
Or, screw it... let's not even go to work.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has just released the results of an investigation into employee fraud at the EPA. The environment, which seems to actually be in need of protecting, is being "overseen" by employees that can't even be bothered to show up for work. (via Reason Hit & Run)
[An] EPA manager [...] allowed an employee to stay at home and not report for duty for several years... [T]his EPA manager not only entered fraudulent time-and-attendance records for the absent employee but also approved the same fraudulent records. It is estimated that the manager's approval of fraudulent time-and-attendance records cost the government more than $500,000...Telecommuting: the wave of the future! Stay at home,
This senior executive, who was the absent employee's prior supervisor, remained aware that the employee had been teleworking for more than 20 years with very little substantive work product to show during this time...Two decades of pajama-wearing non-production, and all this employee has to show for it is a half-million dollars... and a wall full of Employee of the Month awards.
Even more egregious is that this EPA manager authored and approved exemplary performance appraisals that resulted in a cash award for the absent employee.If telecommuting seems like too much of a hassle, you could just turn the government's national security fervor against itself and do whatever it is you'd rather be doing with your time, all while collecting a paycheck, as in the case of a "Mr. Beale":
The investigation also revealed that [a] senior executive did not exercise due diligence, in part because she believed [...] that Mr. Beale worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. She never questioned Mr. Beale further, she said, because she believed the questioning might compromise national security...Here's where the War on Terror meets mid-level management. The government's "Insider Threat" program has employees worried that questioning government policies, much less an EPA employee's claims that he's doing important NATSEC work, will see them quickly and forcibly ejected from the corner cubicle and deposited directly into the bowels of the nearest SuperMax.
This unwillingness to question issues of purported national security enabled this senior executive to authorize or approve fraudulent time-and-attendance records and travel vouchers in excess of $180,000.
Mr. Beale's important CIA work apparently involved collecting paychecks and cash "reimbursements" from the EPA for nearly a decade.
Our investigation indicated that the senior executive approved, or authorized the approval of, fraudulent time-and-attendance records and travel vouchers for Mr. Beale from 2000 through 2010...Mr. Beale (prior to his indictment) racked up a tab approaching $1 million, all collected from US citizens, most of whom actually have to go to work in order to get paid.
There's likely a lot more abuse where that came from, but Deputy Assistant Inspector Allan Williams' summary doesn't detail presumably ongoing investigations. It does, however, ominously note that the above person was "not the only EPA manager who was allowing employees not to report for duty."
Mr. Beale may be headed for jail but the "telecommuter" detailed above, who put in 20 years of service without leaving his home or lifting a finger, walked away clean, as did his fraudulent partners back at the office.
Upon receiving a target letter from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the senior executive retired and was not prosecuted. Furthermore, the DOJ declined to prosecute either the absent employee or the current supervisor.The OIG report also details the misconduct related to an employee suffering from a debilitating disease that prevents him from fulfilling his duties. At the time of the investigation, the employee was actually residing in an assisted living facility. The EPA kindly allowed him to telecommute, but like its other long-distance workers, not much actual work was being done.
[E]mployee has not been physically able to complete any work for at least the last year; however, this employee continues to draw a full salary and receive the benefits of an active employee [...] and has been allowed to remain on telework status for several years without providing any substantive work product.And, finally, if you can be bothered to show up at work, there's nothing obligating you to perform anything more strenuous than some wrist/thumb movement.
[A] career EPA employee [...] allegedly stored pornographic materials on an EPA network server shared by colleagues [...] The OIG's investigation determined that the employee downloaded and viewed more than 7,000 pornographic files during duty hours...And it's not just what the OIG discovered when it peeked into the server. It's what the employee was actually doing when the OIG stopped by.
When an OIG special agent arrived at this employee's work space to conduct an interview, the special agent witnessed the employee actively viewing pornography on his government-issued computer.The employee subsequently admitted to spending two to six hours a day viewing and downloading porn. This would seem excessive on a home computer, much less on your employer's computer. This too has been passed along to the DOJ for potential prosecution, but if an employee can spend 20 years not working for the US government and walk away with nearly a million dollars' worth of compensation without being prosecuted, I would imagine this porn aficionado will be served with little more than a minor slap on his well-used wrist.
The OIG continues to provide the valuable service of showing taxpayers just how badly their money is being abused. Unfortunately, it can't do much more than investigate. It's up to the agencies to fix their problems and many of those investigated seem completely unwilling to do any more than is absolutely unavoidable. The DOJ's scattershot approach to punishing wrongdoers indicates there's at least a 50/50 chance that years of fraud and misconduct will result in nothing harsher than an opportunity to exit gracefully -- and without being named.
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Filed Under: epa, fraud, scams, telecommuting
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Virgin EPA employee, this is a real vagina. Vagina, this is Virgin EPA employee. Have fun.
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There's no excuse for them not to have a proxy.
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Talk about chilling effects. If I worked at your place, for sure I would only browse using a smartphone with uncensored net access. Even for browsing for work reasons. A pretty big thumbs down for working at your institute.
OTOH, your enthusiastic enforcement means that my fitting a small, inconspicuous device to anyone's keyboard cable could enable me to get him fired at will. I wouldn't find that an advantage, but I'm sure lots of assholes would.
OTOH, anyone could fit one of those on my computer. OK, for sure now I'm not getting near your workplace. Or it that what you really meant by
> There's no excuse for them not to have a proxy
as in, "them", the individual workers, running their own filtering software, trying to keep their jobs?
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It is chilling but it's meant that way. We don't mess with people using public funded systems for personal use. We have no problem with users bringing in their smartphones, etc. Just so long as it doesn't use the public funded equipment, then it's a manager/hr issue.
If somebody tried to attach a device (we have those blocked btw), they couldn't xfer the data. We have device control as well.
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Wow, you guys are really advanced.
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Said user would probably go 'wtf?!' and we'd be contacted to investigate the computer and not the person.
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OK, put your job where your mouth is. I dare you to upload original (or at least modified so that the content itself won't be automatically identified) porn to imgur.com (or any other image/file hosting site on the net) and then test your proxy's ability to block it. (You don't have to turn yourself in, in case you were wrong. Just be careful not to pee your pants from the anxiety.)
Or, possibly you could admit that your idealized world isn't, well, exactly reality?
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I posit, then, that either your net access is more or less useless, or you could have actually taken my challenge.
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As for porn, on my last company a guy was called for porn because an advertisement slipped by on some site he was accessing while looking for sources for a technical work and he almost got fired. The thing is, he was working directly to the president and this got the restrictions relaxed. The place did not turn into a porn heaven because you need to deliver results. If you don't deliver what is expected from you you are fired. The EPA seems to be an exception.
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Re: Re:
Yes, there is: web-filter proxies are stupid, ineffective, and used exclusively by inexperienced and incompetent network managers who are more of a danger to their operations than the people surfing porn sites.
Trying to solve a human problem ("surfing porn on the job") with technical measures is a prima facie indicator of profound ignorance not just on a functional level, but a practical one: everyone KNOWS that these proxies are ridiculously profitable scams peddled by scumbags and that they're trivially easy to bypass.
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A combination of proxy, firewall, device control and NAC makes it pretty hard to bypass.
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Meeting a real vagina can be scary for people used to seeing porn stars who have had a lot of work done down there.
That said, perhaps if we had a censorship office of some kind our porn-loving public servants can be gainfully employed rating it. /s
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Re: Telecommuting
Pants
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I've got no problem with "Telecommuter"
The supervisor should be sacked and made to pay back all of the lost wages from the employee because THEY let the money walk out the door.
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Re:I've got no problem with "Telecommuter"
You do seem to either have a problem with personal ethics, or the ability to expect ethical behavior in others. "Telecommuter" was stealing taxpayers' money, and not in the "government is inefficient" sense, in a very direct sense which said "Telecomuter" should have been aware of.
Frankly, in this story, something smells, and if I were investigating, the first possibility I'd investigate was that said "Telecommuter" was blackmailing said manager.
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Re: Re:I've got no problem with "Telecommuter"
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Re: I've got no problem with "Telecommuter"
AND the employee's. Mostly the employees -- they aren't children, after all. But you're right, both the manager and employee should be disciplined.
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The fact the DOJ is refusing to prosecute anyone involved, smacks of the executive branch's involvement with assigning these people to the 'no show' jobs at the EPA.
I can see through my corrupt government's actions like I have X-Ray vision, and it makes me sick to my stomach!
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No acountability for deliverables
During this time, I have had deliverables and deadlines I had to meet with my managers actively holding my feet to the fire to not only do the work, but to provide a high quality work product.
Not having rigid, specific hours has allowed me to be more productive than being held captive within a cubicle farm. It has also allowed me to be more creative and independent without someone constantly looking over my shoulder.
Telecommuting is a two way street that requires discipline and active interest in the activities from both the employee and their managers. If either shirks their responsibilities the whole thing falls apart and this is where the EPA and also Yahoo went wrong.
If the job requires someone to perform the task or service then it is just as important for the manager or ownership (ref: startup) to follow up regularly for status reports and deliverables - it is really that simple...
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Tell you what:
The NSA is way more expensive, and what they do is not merely wasting taxpayer money but rather using it to the taxpayers' detriment.
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Re: Tell you what:
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Bed
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Ha! The DOJ has much better things to do than prosecute ordinary crime.
"Feel free steal millions from hard working citizens, but if you dare steal a penny from our fat cat buddies in Hollywood. We will hunt you to the ends of the earth for that. We will make your life a living hell. (All at taxpayer expense, of course.)"
The DOJ unofficial policy manual
What a travesty.
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Re: Ha! The DOJ has much better things to do than prosecute ordinary crime.
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Job
I could also setup a server to store data and lease it out, promoting government type security.
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...but it was cheaper and easier than firing him.
I'm actually surprised there isn't more of this. There's so much secrecy these days that it's hard to verify anything. Take National Security Letters, for example: How do you really know that the "agent" handing you the letter is an FBI agent? You're not allowed to ask anyone else, so it seems to me it is perfect for false-flag NSL's.
And now, Mr. Beale: How would the supervisor check to see if he was a CIA agent? The CIA would deny they employ him, whether he's an agent or not. What action would comprise "due diligence" under these conditions?
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Re: Living the dream
But somehow I'm uncomfortable with the idea that "the dream" is living as a parasite on the work of others.
Maybe I'm missing something here.
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A friend of mine many years ago (early 1970's) worked at major company in New Jersey. Soon after he got there, he discovered a "co-worker" who had a nice office, apparently drew a nice salary - but only seemed to show up every once in a while, when he was very friendly, bought my friend lunch, but did no obvious work. My friend asked his boss about this guy and was told "He was here when I got here. The guy who I replaced told me he'd been here for years and not to ask any questions - just approve whatever he asks for."
My friend actually got to know the phantom employee fairly well - and the phantom was eventually quite open about his *real* job: He was fairly highly placed in an organized crime family. He eventually saw objective evidence that this was actually true - like the evening the phantom invited my friend to a fancy dinner, they had their car stopped by someone who spoke quietly to the phantom - who announced that "it wasn't a good night" at the restaurant and took him elsewhere. The next morning, the papers were full of stories about a mob hit at the restaurant they passed on.
But the 1970's is modern times. The Roman army had to develop procedures to detect and foil officers who created phantom troops and kept their salaries. That's where rules like "the person who authorizes cannot approve" come from. Bureaucratic rules take on a life of their own, but many originally arose to solve real problems - sometimes problems "as old as the hills".
-- Jerry
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