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Subscribe to RSSJames M. Woosley, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intelligence chief, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to an elaborate scam over several years involving false travel expense reports totaling nearly $600,000.
Woosley must surrender more than $180,000 he made in a scheme that also included several other ICE employees and contractors, federal prosecutors said.
The former federal employees all pleaded guilty to submitting false receipts and vouchers for reimbursement of travel expenses and time worked, according to court documents.
“Today James Woosley became the fifth — and highest-ranking — individual to plead guilty as part of a series of fraud schemes among rogue employees and contractors at ICE,” said U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen said in a statement. “He abused his sensitive position of trust to fleece the government by submitting phony paperwork for and taking kickbacks from subordinates who were also on the take.”
Sentencing was scheduled for July 13. Woosley could serve 18 to 27 months in prison, and faces a potential fine.
Four others previously pleaded guilty in the case, including Lateisha Rollerson, 38, whom Woosley had groomed to become an employee, at times lived with him and later went on to become his personal assistant. As part of her plea agreement in March, Rollerson was ordered to forfeit $295,000 gained in the fraud.
Also convicted were Ahmed Adil Abdallat, William J. Korn and Stephen E. Henderson, all close associates of Woosley who also took part in falsifying travel documents, according to court records.
The fraud began when Henderson, an ICE contractor, asked Rollerson to make up fake hotel receipts for travel, which were approved by Woosley, and submitted online through the federal government's voucher system.
From that point in June of 2008 to October of 2010, Rollerson submitted numerous fraudulent travel receipts, with a portion of the money kicked back to Woosley and other employees. Woosley used some of the money to buy a boat, according to court records.
In September of 2008, Woosley and his assistant came up with a scheme to live in a rental house in the tony Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va., rent free, court records show. Rent on the house was paid for by having Korn, who was based in Tucson, Ariz., submit false claims for temporary duty expenses at a hotel lodging rate. The hotel lodging rate was some $3,000 more per month than the rent on the home. Henderson as well as Woosley’s sons also at times lived in the house.
In another prong of the scheme, ICE employee Abdallat, who had a long association with Woosley and was based in El Paso, Texas, traveled to Washington, D.C., on extended temporary duty at Woosley’s request. He stayed in a private residence with his girlfriend but submitted fraudulent travel bills for hotel stays of more than $115,000, according to court documents. Some of that money was kept by Abdallat, but more than half went to Woosley, Rollerson and Woosley’s son.
According to a Washington Post, Woosley spent 28 years working in federal law enforcement, primarily with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which later became ICE, then a division of the Department of Homeland Security.
In 2009, Woosley was named the head of ICE intelligence effort. At one point in his career he served as ICE’s interim director for Intelligence.
Woosley was relieved of his position in February, 2011.
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These people are absolutely foul and disgusting pigs. This is not about freedom of speech or workers’ rights. This is just an excuse to riot. The blame for this goes all the way to the white house. The Obama administration is destroying this great country. Freedom and Liberty are being lost.
you idiot. you copied/pasted the wrong fox news clip w/o even reading the original story. LOL. what a dweeb.
Grate Merica - you are obviously the Savior we have been weighting four to save us from the dog eating Kenyan Socialist. Your keen observations and stellar intellect will lead this grate country back to the grateness we have been missing since our last grate leader Dubya rode off into the texass sunset. Oh sweet lordy!
Hey Trolls get paid by the woid, not for having braynes.
Grate amerika this story is about the ICE
All is well, all is well, the Government is here to help you... it's those greedy business & industrial types that need to be exterminated & Obamanized from society.
And I can hardly wait for the government to put their hands on the $600,000,000,000 that Obamacare will extract from big business and big industry and redistribute to themselves and their crony's.
Great America-3966011
Wow,,, Really,, whats wrong with you?
Great America
The teapublican home office called in and they are begging you to stop posting....
They say they don't need your help to lose this election!
Cmon Neo Cons and Fascist Right Wingers lets have it...... Its the Unions Fault, Its Obamas Fault, Obama made my wife leave me, Its raining so Obama hates sunshine
Now I wonder why they didnt post THIS part of the story?
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/46192/muslim-dhs-intelligence-analyst-gets-wrist-slap-after-stealing-laundering-2-milln-to-jordan/
Fedup - Thats because MSNBC couldn't post the truth if they tried...everything these days online is either made up (flat out lie) or claimed to be an editorial.
Journalism and integrity are 2 very different things and in todays news compnaies mean absolutely nothing. All you need to do is look at who owns them and you will have your answer.
Whacko - News flash all of these items are happening on Obama's watch. But you get an 'E' for effort in your deflection tactics.
Did any of you folks READ this story??? Many of the posters here obviously did not. This joker Woosley did not get all the money in this scheme; the money he has to return [$180,000 - still a HUGE amt] is his share of what was stolen (altho that doesn't matter to me -- considering his important position in an important agency, his sentence should have been longer).
Janet Napolitano was NOT head of DHS when this scheme was hatched. However, the investigation began in 2011 under her watch. [Credit probably is due the Inspector General's Office -- I worked for the CIA IG's office; those folks are very serious about their inspections and investigations.]
To the person who posted the link to debbie schlussel's website: Really? Almost every "fact" in that article is incorrect. There are misspellings in the headline and even Woosley's name is misspelled. The amount of money stolen is off by about $1.4 million, etc. etc. Yep, a very professional article. But then, the Right Wing flakes have never been interested in the facts or the truth, have they?
People, some of you are not the brightest on the block, are ya! The odds of this probably has been going on a lot longer than Obama took office. This is just the tip of the ice burg of the corruption in our government that has been going on for years. I am sure if they looked a little deeper in to many of the committees, organizations set up by the government I am willing to bet that you will find a lot more corruption (individuals taking advantage of tax payers money is nothing new)! Now one thing Obama is guilty at and that is he promised to clean up the corruption in our government. I think so far he has done a poor job on that. I am sure there is a lot more corruption, they just haven't been caught yet!
Dont forget, Nancy promised to "Drain the swamp"
Great America, you cut an pasted theresponse to the wrong article. Hmm.
Whoever hired this guy should be fired. Must have been a political appointment,
loyal,
Should that be Carter, Bush one, Clinton or who. He was part of both Democratic and Republican administrations. What I don't understand is how some blindly back the Federal Government without question. How do they continue to accept "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you"? How do they blindly protect their party and condemn the other? Why do we all keep electing people that act only so they can keep their job and fail to perform the over site that is an integral part of their job?
We, as an electorate, keep sending people to Washington that seem to have only their best interests at heart. They pass laws that are politically expedient at the time, yet do nothing to make sure that the laws they have passed are pertinent to the changes we face. They create agency's and let them become power centers unto themselves with no mechanisms to assure that their creation is still necessary or if they have evolved to meet the countries current needs and the needs of a changing world.
ANOTHER black eye for DHS. It is high time Ms. Napolitano submitted her resignation and her name be added to the list of incompetent administration appointed Cabinet members.
I can hardly wait for an independent investigation to be completed to see what other SCAMS Woolsey and his assistant were involved in.
Yeah....here comes the attacks saying Ms. Napolitano had Congressional approval and was not a recess appointment (deflection).
Excuse me Ido, by the way does that stand for idiot? If you checked, this started in 2008 before Napolitano was even thought of. Try some other right wing spin. It probably won't work either.
This is what happens when one moron appoints another moron.
And yes Ido, Ms. Nappy will have an excuse. Two-faced would be a complement for that one.
Government is way too large to be able to be acountable to the people, someway somehow government needs to shrink in size by about 90%. Most of them do nothing but waste money, increase speding and try to gain more control over the people. they need to be made to find jobs in the private workforce.
James M. Woosley, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to an elaborate scam over several years involving false travel expense reports totaling nearly $600,000. Woosley must surrender more than $180,000 he made in a scheme
Wow they are really slapping this guy on this wrist. A whole 180 grand out of 600,000? That will show others to not follow his example...
verno....."Excuse me Ido, by the way does that stand for idiot? If you checked, this started in 2008 before Napolitano was even thought of."
From the article: "From that point in June of 2008 to October of 2010....."
Yep, Ms. Naplitano and "her" staff had plenty of time (21 MONTHS) to "discover" this fraudulent activity within one of her sub-agencies. And now, we hear of this issue in May 2012. Sounds a bit like the GAO fiasco.
And that last comment in my post was total /sarcasm/. Guess I will have to add /s/ to future sarcastic remarks for comprehension.
Anyway, thanks for reading my post and using such provocative adjectives.
The prison sentence guidelines for this are far to short. Serving 18-27 months for what is essentially embezzlement and grand theft is far too short. The sentence should be talked about in years, not months, like maybe 5-10 years. Woolsey stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government and enabled several other people to steal hundreds of thousands more. He is the basically the leader of a large criminal conspiracy and should be prosecuted as such. A sentence of 18-27 months, of which he would end up serving at most about 12 months is woefully inadequate for the scope of his criminal activities. We need to start sentencing these white collar crooks on the same guidelines we would sentence anyone else responsible for a theft and conspiracy of this scale. As an example, first degree grand larceny in NY is punishable by up to 25 years in prison and fourth degree grand larceny (the lowest possible charge for a theft over $1000 of any kind) carries a sentence of up to 4 year in prison. Since the amount is in excess of $100,000, in NY he would be charged with first degree grand larceny and be facing a sentence of up to 25 years. Certainly Woolsey should be sentenced somewhere near the middle to top of the 25 year range, not the 18-27 month slap on this wrist they are talking about here, particularly with the conspiracy aspect added in.
But IDO, they were hired during the Bushie years, get it? LOL, you perverted Retards are so much fun to watch make fools of yourselves!
BTW, they did get caught under the Obama administration. Kinda like the Obama team got bin Laden and the Bush family still has ties to his offspring. You bigoted idiots cannot figure out what is what, can you?
How many morons does it take to make a Republican voting base? They don't know because none of them can count!
WAY PAST time for that b!tch to go !!
If someone had gone into a bank and held it up (even unarmed) for $600,000, they'd be serving much longer than 18 to 27 months.
It's getting more and more difficult differentiating the sworn criminals from the non sworn criminals.
Cmon Neo Cons and Fascist Right Wingers lets have it...... Its the Unions Fault, Its Obamas Fault, Obama made my wife leave me, Its raining so Obama hates sunshine
sez me you must hate yourself for supporting Obama as you cannot actually discuss a subject but have to try and stir up hatred for Obama so you can then complain about them talking about him. You are the type that ALL people have a problem with as all you wish to do is turn everything into a blame Obama so you can actually feel good that you are defending him.
Woosley has been around a long time. He started with Jimmy Carter, was CIA director for two years under Clinton and was appointed to ICE director of intelligence in June 2009 by none other than Janet Napolitano. You folks that like demean others with your childlike responses need to educate yourselves befor you spout your inane drivel. Woosley was a career government employee who worked in both Republican and Democrat administrations.
The only language these people understand is money. They need to be disowned of EVERYthing. Period. If all they're threatened with is having to give back a few of the dollars they stole they are not going to be deterred. Disown all of their property and ban them from federal jobs for life, no getting elected and no voting for life. We need a blacklist for people like this. They should have to pay 50% of whatever pay they earn in restitution for the rest of their lives. Minimum of five years in jail.
WTF!!!
The problem with a large government is the fraud and overspending. The amounts of money we spend on lavish hotels, and meals for most government workers is insane. They stay at the nicest hotels, and eat at the nicest restaurants and feel entitled to it. Look at the barbers for our upstanding senators and congressmen making bank, on the tax payers dime and they do not give a @!$%# about it. I know it is only a small amount, but the small amounts add up to millions, then billions, now trillions. Republicans and Democrats are both to blame.
rick-2188532 you hit the nail on the head. both sides are to blame . greed has no party affiliation.
This just the tip of the iceberg, but admit it folk's, this has been going on for decades.
A nice cushy job with bennies, and the whores come out.
Try it once: "Oh,they missed it".
Twice: "These people in accounting are really stupid!".
3rd time: "@!$%#! Nobody is looking or cares".
4th: "Hey *fill in name here, I gotta great scam going on. All you have to do is..........."
5th: The pyramid begins, and Katy bar the door.
I spent 22 years in government and never took a dime. STUPID ME !
Guess I wasn't hooked up with the in, or "Whats in it for me crowd".
Then again, I won't be spending my autumn years looking out of a 1x1 window, in a 8x10 room either.
Doem Do Em? it looks like these crooks won't be spending their autumn years in jail either. Less than three years for stealing more money than the average american household makes in twenty. Oh but they will have to pay back almost a third of the stolen money. What is wrong with this picture.
Sucker! You probably are the only person in government that hasn't taken a bribeI use to do work for the Federal government 20 years ago as a private contractor of services!My "handler" or person who approved my contracts just openly told me in his office he wanted money for contracts!I couldn't and wouldn't line his pocket with my hard earned cash,so I toild him no,politely.He told ,not so politely,that I would never get another contract! You know what? He was right!They never gave me another contract! Nice system! I still I did the right thing! I hope the fukker got caught!
you should have turned him in....you would have had a 50/50 chance.
mas098 - you were part of the problem...you could have called the IG's office and had a sting operation set up so they could get the guy but you didn't. They have a fraud, waste, and abuse hotline for a reason. I know, I am a government employee who has used it. From my experience, there appears to be more problems in non-DoD agencies as there is not as much training, oversight and accountability. I think it is partly because the Federal agenices don't have as large of a spending budget, and there are only so many oversight resources available...someone somewhere has determine this is an acceptable risk. And it doesn't matter if it was a Dem or Rep...the result is still the same. DoD isn't perfect either but they seem to have better checks and balances in place, and separation of conflicting duties.
He should be hung by the neck, period!!
I would be willing to bet that 50% of all government employees do the same thing. There is no way that over 180 million people paying 33% of their income in taxes would result in a deficit. The Government employees are fleecing us, which is nothing new.
I am so glad we have all of these squeaky clean private employees here ranting. Morons.
What is wrong with these people. They get monster pay and obscene pensions and still they steal...Send them to someplace like Chad or Sudan and see how they like it there.
Actually, we are fleecing ourselves. In attempting to stay elected, we, the elected officials, are giving away the country to every special interest group under the sun. Interest on the debt will soon be greater than the discretionary spending. Look at the tax code nearly 2000 pages of perks for every possible interest group. Spend your way into office. Get rid of the tax code and go to a 10% VAT and watch the economy take off since business decisions will be made on economic grounds, not on tax advantages. Look up Double Dutch to see how companies get around paying their fair share...I could go on for >2000 pages.
robiscoole:
I'm so glad we have the sqeaky clean gov't morons commenting as well. Thank you President Obama for uniting us together. My we have another four years?
robiscoole
The biggest diference is you public thieves steal tax payer dollars which you are responsible for. Private cheaters steal private money which their companies watch. Believe me private companies hit those type employees with the book. They never get early retirement and pensions for doing the theft.
You need to remember all your wages and benefits come from tax dollars. I know you will say you pay taxes also. Those taxes, if you really pay them, come from tax dollars to start with so with that logic, we send out a dollar from the tax coffers and get maybe 15% of it back. Not a good investment at all.
NEA Exec said it well..........They get monster pay and obscene pensions and still they steal...
Yes, Sarcasticus, you will have another 4 years and if you pull your head out, you might notice that your life is getting better every day! LOL
Ps the only thing that keeps us from being united in solving the problems we all face is that the loudmouth right wing extremist idiots cannot shut up long enough to notice things are better now than when their hero, the Idiot of all Idiots, left office.
We don't really expect you to understand this because it appears you are one of the idiots!
tex2c:
"We don't really expect..." I see you are working lock step with Obama in the reunification thing...he'd be so proud of you! How about a medal for little tex2c? In fact, your judgment of my position about anything seems to be skewed by the pubic hair. You just can't get off "the Bush" can you? If you can't see what is happening downtown on your man's watch, get off the kool-aid. It's right in front of your eyes...unless you are off the grid and irrelevant.
VET
I dont work for the govt. but judging by your name you have before. There is nothing greater than a VET talking about those that are on the govt dole. You remember taking @!$%# home from work, filing expense reports to your advantage. I know the drill but you seem a litte forgetful. I cannot stand vets that have to point it out in everything they do i.e. (concerned vet), let me quess we still owe you for your sacrifice to god and country. Well thank you from the bottom of my boot.
This is what happened to the Roman empire and now in the USA. Thanks to Washington DC.
that's our president's man
Or perhaps this President is doing his job, thus why we hear so much more going on. You know, you can't always blame everything on the President, regardless of who it is. If you think he spends his day checking accounting and receipts of ICE agents you're incorrect.
Keep positive about things like this. They are ending and people are being caught left and right. Regardless of who is the President this stuff needs to end.
Mark, this man was hired under Bushie, get it? He was exposed under Obama, get it? What other stupid claims can we make fun of you for?
Looks like another Washington crook goes down. I figure in about another 2 months we will see a lot more go down unless martial law goes into affect.
Clearly Martial Law is going to help keep peace amongst the people.
Government pay and benefits must not be enough. This lets you feel a little better about taking that pen home from the office.
you would probably get 6 years for taking a pen. he is getting what? 2 years for 600k or paying back 180k. if you steal, make it big so there will be hardly any punishment. at least that appears to be the rules.
i personally have not checked to see who appointed this guy. does it matter? they all seem to be dirty and no one can watch thousands of people and their every step. that was the job THAT GUY was suppose to be doing. go figure.
Hang 'em high.
Personally; he should be exiled to Mexico in the middle of the largest drug cartel region to fend for himself!!!!!!!!
Actually; let's send 50% of our government officials right behind him!!!
Boy what a country. Our government is so dysfunctional
ICE, Immigration, DOJ, ATF, GSA. DOE off the top of my head OH FHA, I can't even remember them all ...
OH and don’t forget Congress , Senate and Pres
Remind me why I pay my taxes?
To keep the Federal, State and Local governments AFLOAT?
Oh I’m Sorry that is to keep private/public banks and the financial
system afloat.
I’m pretty much not seeing the Cost Benefit.
People in responsibility with NO ACCOUNTABLITY and can’t
even take responsibility for their actions and poor operations
Ah just retire - take the retirement payment and go off into
the sunset.
That’s why I pay my taxes
SICK
Worst part..... is an investigation, where we hire more people to investigate the crooks, and these people start their own pyramid deals on who gets off, and who goes to prison.
Circular firing squad comes to mind, but if you think of the pryamid deal like I mentioned, America
willmight be celebrating our 300th without a damn thing changing.Just lookn for the best fall guy - politics
Oh and the Pole Dancer special service group AKA, Secret Service
You have two alternative options. Dont pay your taxes, stay here, and go to jail. Or, dont pay your taxes and leave to live in some better place. Next issue?
18 to 27 months in prison huh? Gee, gotta love govt jobs, you can break any law you want and only get a wrist slap. And "We the People" allow it to happen, so why the outrage? Why even publicize it? Americans just need to shut up and let these criminals do what they want because we won't do a thing to change it.
social,
This is the kind of things OWS is trying to address, however, they have to rid their ranks of the anarchist and tag-a-longs before they can be effective
That's why you should pay attention to The Center For Public Integrity, instead.
18-27 months doesn't seem long enough.
The median personal income in the US is ~$40K/year. He stole $600K. 600/40=15. 15x12=180.
180 months seems fair.
Death is the real answer!!
However upon further examination you notice its 600k spread out over years based on receipts. So that leads me to conclude that he did not steal 600k in raw cash, rather used his government credit card for inappropriate purchases.
Funny how people want this guy "dead" or "shot" for 600k worth of inappropriate spending over years of service when the real crooks of this country have cost everyone's a combines 1trillion USD. Yet i bet you still support Wells Fargo, Bank Of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Chase etc. If the people who held credit cards and bank accounts with these banks would close accounts and pull their money you would get more justification than trying to shoot this guy who stole 600k.
GCooper-4276999
Yes, he did steal $600,000 cash that they found so far. He didn't charge everything, he turned in false expense reports. Think how much more he wasted of our tax dollars.
The only service he gave us cost the Secret Service guys some cash in Columbia. At least they recieved something from the "service" they received. We did not.
If i misread than i stand corrected.
Personally i do not condone this behavior. However, with that said i still feel the real problem lies in our banks. I'm not much of an activist until lately. I'm urging people i know to make a move with how they hold their money. To me this story is small fish trying to hide a bigger problem. In the grand scope of things this 1 individual is less than .0001 percent of the real problem lol. Because banks hold our money they have too much power.
There will always be the story of personal corruption in the government, no matter how big or how small it is. Won't matter if the current President were Republican or Democrat, we all know that.
Jesus seen these same people some 2000 years ago. They were saying to him,"We have Piped and yhe have not danced" to him. There just Children in the market place running amock. France seen them too they were the Buwashza. I'm an idiot that cant spell and I can see this. I am also retarded," hire the retarded their fun to watch"
SEE YA
Former ICE chief Woosley could serve 18 to 27 months for swindling American taxpayers out of $600,000 ? If an American taxpayer did that to a corporation or the government he, or she would be serving 18 to 27 YEARS..
Why is it called civil fraud when a government official or corporate executive defrauds the people, and criminal fraud when the people do it to a corporation or the government ?....Something smells very wrong about this.
Sure hope the Feds have common sense not to give him and the others their pensions..when you commit a crime on the job you forfeit all!
your comment makes too much sense. what do you bet, he will get full retirement.
Odds are for sure - Ridiculous
What is the big deal? Bush stole 3 TRILLION dollars and he still gets his pension! You idiots need to get some perspective here! LOL
JUst another example of gov bull@!$%# lies. Cut his balls off, feed them to his wife(she knows about this) and call it GOOD!!
Can you say "PRISON?" Send every one who got any illicit money to prison. Seize their assets.
It is time in this country to hold the leaders of this country to the highest standard. If they don't live up to it , KILL THEM!!
18 months. $180K. That's $10K/month. Slap on the wrist.
This is how it goes down in this country of ours and it's only going to get worse. This isn't a government for the people it's a government that wants to get elected and steal from the taxpayers because it's legal when you are in politics. Both sides! It's funny how every person comes to give a comment and the right blames it on the left and the left blames it on the right. Read the name GotYouAllFooled! Both sides!