Army Sgt pleads guilty to stealing over $1M in cash meant as Afghanistan aid

[tsai3904]

Army staff sergeant says she betrayed country in $1-million scam

The case of Staff Sgt. Tonya Long is part of a pattern of fraud and theft among U.S. soldiers responsible for paying Afghans who support U.S. forces.

In Afghanistan, Tonya Long, a 13-year Army veteran, approved military cash payments to Afghan drivers of "jingle trucks," the colorful transport trucks that carry supplies to U.S. bases.

Last week, Staff Sgt. Long stood in the dock in a federal courtroom here and read aloud from a statement she had written on notebook paper:

"I cannot express how sorry I am … I chose to betray my country and my family." She did not ask for mercy, she told a judge, "because I don't deserve it."

Long, 30, had pleaded guilty to stealing at least $1 million and shipping the cash in hundred-dollar bills to the U.S. in the guts of hollowed-out VCR players.

Long's scam is part of a pattern of fraud and theft among U.S. soldiers responsible for paying Afghans who support U.S. forces. Last year, 18 U.S. soldiers were charged with such thefts, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. Nine U.S. contractors also were charged.

The inspection agency is now investigating 80 bribery and corruption cases, "and the Tonya Long case is a prime example," said Special Inspector General John F. Sopko.

Recent prosecutions have described U.S. soldiers creating elaborate schemes to pocket piles of cash, often with the complicity of corrupt Afghans.

Last June, investigators seized $23,000 sewn inside a teddy bear at a base in Afghanistan. The sergeant who had tried to mail the bear to the U.S. told them he was returning cash sent to him to buy carpets, but couldn't explain why he sewed it inside the bear. The case is under investigation.

In September, a disbursing agent at Bagram Airfield, Sgt. Nancy Nicole Smith, pleaded guilty to forging documents and stealing $100,000 intended for U.S. military operations. Smith stuffed the money in a backpack before her flight to the U.S. at the end of her tour.

In October, Sgt. Christopher Weaver pleaded guilty to his part in a scheme to steal more than $1 million in fuel intended for U.S. forces and sell it to an Afghan. Weaver was paid $5,000 for every 5,000-gallon truck he allowed to illegally leave a U.S. base near Jalalabad.

In December, Staff Sgt. Philip Stephen Wooten, a paying agent, pleaded guilty to stealing about $225,000 by falsifying receipts for money intended for reconstruction efforts. Sgt. 1st Class Mauricio Espinoza, who contracted with Afghan vendors, was charged in the same case.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-afghan-scam-20130317,0,4538235,full.story

[kcchiefs6465]

I remember the hearings on the 500M that went missing. As far as I know, nothing came about that one. Let me look for another post I made. [I'll edit it in]

Sequester? 170,000,000 lost jobs? This shit is so absurd I don't see how anyone buys it.

[Ranger29860]

They have been catching military people stealing like this since the begging of time. ITs nothing new, crooks work in any job. We got briefed all the time on people getting caught tearing teddy bears apart and stuffing them full of money.

[kcchiefs6465]

This was my specific response, and an interesting read, though I realize it dooesn't have much to US forces stealing money. Blackwater did testify before a Congressional hearing on (X)M missing dollars. [though I do believe it was 500-550M] My main point of the post below was that some people get rich off of these wars, while many die.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ____________________

The man Congress put in charge of auditing the billions of dollars dumped on Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled has told the Los Angels Times he can't rule out the possibility that $6.6 billion in cash sent from the U.S. was stolen.

Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen told the Times the missing money may represent "the largest theft of funds in national history."

It was not, it is crucial to note here, U.S. tax-payer dollars which have gone missing in Iraq. The money came from a special fund set up by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with Iraq's own money -- funds which were withheld from the nation during a decade of harsh economic sanctions under Saddam.

Now, and here's the real kicker, Iraq wants it's money back. The Los Angeles Times says some officials in Baghdad have threatened to take the U.S. government to court to reclaim the missing loot. The last known holder of the funds, before they mysteriously disappeared into the dusty oblivion of post-war Iraq, was the U.S. government.

"Congress is not looking forward to having to spend billions of our money to make up for billions of their money that we can't account for, and can't seem to find," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) told the Times. Waxman was head of the House Government Reform Committee which held hearings on U.S. waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq about six years ago.

Bowen has been a harsh critic of the way the U.S. government spent money in Iraq following the ouster of Saddam.


Speaking to CBS News correspondent Lara Logan in July 2009, he warned that "billions of dollars were wasted in the Iraqi reconstruction enterprise," and said a whole new approach was needed in Afghanistan.


Waste, fraud plague Iraq reconstruction

As for the missing $6.6 billion, Bowen did not tell the Times whom he believed might have made off with the tremendous sum of neatly packaged blocks of $100 dollar bills.

For almost a decade, when audits and reports surfaced about money being misspent or wasted in post-war Iraq, the finger has generally been pointed first at the generic "corrupt Iraqi officials," of which there are no-doubt many. But as the Times points out in its report Tuesday, "some U.S. contractors were accused of siphoning off tens of millions in kickbacks and graft during the post-invasion period."

The money in question was literally air-lifted into Iraq by the George W. Bush administration, which flew it into Baghdad aboard C-130 military cargo planes. Bush White House officials were worried in the immediate aftermath of Saddam's fall that Iraqis would revolt if salaries weren't paid and services deteriorated. In total, the Times says $12 billion in cash was flown into Iraq in 21 separate C-130 flights by May 2004.


hxxp://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20070981-503543.html



[I][Does] anyone know what happened in this case? I stumbled upon it when looking for an article about the 500M that was missing. I can't remember if the 500M was from Afghanistan or Iraq, but do remember watching the Congressional hearing on it. Some people get rich, some people get dead.