The EPA’s highest-paid employee is going to be sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty to defrauding the government of over $900,000 over the course of the last decade. He did this by 1) not going into work and 2) telling his boss the reason he wasn’t showing up for work was that he had to go to Pakistan to spy for the CIA.
The CIA says they’ve never heard of him.
But wait … isn’t that just what the CIA would say about a super secret spy? Yeah, well, it turns out he lied about some other stuff too:
He also claimed to be suffering from malaria that he got while serving in Vietnam. According to his lawyer’s filing, he didn’t have malaria and never served in Vietnam. He told the story to EPA officials so he could get special handicap parking at a garage near EPA headquarters… On 70 percent of [his airplane flights], he traveled 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 [his boss] 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.
Those hoping to get wrest some simple partisan moral out of this will be disappointed to learn that he served in both the Bush and Obama administrations (earning more than his boss while he was at it.)
On the plus side, Steven Soderbergh and Mat Damon have the perfect subject for their next movie!