Fun at the EPA - John C. Beale

I had posted about Mr. Beale at the beginning of October as his story was first coming to public light. Now, from NBC News:

Climate change expert's fraud was 'crime of massive proportion,' say feds
The EPA�s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors.

John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade, will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday. In a newly filed sentencing memo, prosecutors said that his lies were a "crime of massive proportion" and �offensive� to those who actually do dangerous work for the CIA.

Beale�s lawyer, while acknowledging his guilt, has asked for leniency and offered a psychological explanation for the climate expert�s bizarre tales.

And this:

Two congressional committees are now pressing the EPA, including administrator McCarthy, for answers on the handling of Beale�s case. The new inspector general�s reports fault the agency for a lack of internal controls and policies that allegedly facilitated Beale�s deceptions.

For example, one of the reports states, Beale took 33 airplane trips between 2003 and 2011, costing the government $266,190. On 70 percent of those, he travelled first class and stayed at high end hotels, charging more than twice the government�s allowed per diem limit. But his expense vouchers were routinely approved by another EPA official, a colleague of Beale�s, whose conduct is now being reviewed by the inspector general, according to congressional investigators briefed on the report.

Beale was caught when he �retired� very publicly but kept drawing his large salary for another year and a half. Top EPA officials, including McCarthy, attended a September 2011 retirement party for Beale and two colleagues aboard a Potomac yacht. Six months later, McCarthy learned he was still on the payroll.

The entire organization is rotten. They need to have their funding cut 80% and reorganize -- get some actual scientists in there, not career bureaucrats. And only 30 months? They should throw the book at him -- Pour encourager les autres...