Department of the Interior

OIG investigated allegations that a U.S. Fish and Wildlife (FWS) human resource employee accessed the protected personnel files of a Federal employee without authorization, and that another unknown FWS employee removed a document from the office of a senior manager.We found that the human resource...

The OIG investigated allegations that an Indian community councilman failed to pay the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) the required fees associated with farming and grazing leases on an Indian reservation.Our investigation determined the councilman failed to pay the required fees for his leases from...

OIG investigated allegations that Citation Oil & Gas Corporation (Citation) misreported mineral royalty data to the Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) and underpaid Federal royalties associated with the production of coalbed methane gas from Federal wells located in Wyoming.We determined...

We investigated allegations that a senior official with the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) made several comments that caused other DOI employees to question his ethics. He allegedly expressed his intent to assist two American Indian tribes he had worked with before becoming a DOI employee...

The OIG conducted a joint investigation into allegations that the owners of Encore Services, LLC and Ideal Consulting, LLC bribed Chippewa Cree Tribe (CCT) officials to sign and backdate agreements, which allowed the companies to steal millions of dollars from the CCT. We also investigated...

The OIG investigated allegations that Richard Ruggiero, Chief of the Division of International Conservation (DIC), International Affairs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), may have violated Federal ethics regulations when he issued a cooperative agreement and was involved in two grants to...

The OIG investigated allegations that a BIA manager had sexually harassed his direct subordinate.The employee and two other women, both of whom had reported to the manager in the past, told us that he had subjected them to unwelcome and inappropriate touching or sexual remarks. The employee said the...

The OIG investigated whether National Park Service (NPS) management appropriately handled sexual misconduct complaints at a National Recreation Area (NRA) in Texas. The initial complainant reported that an employee at the NRA exposed himself to her and sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions...

OIG investigated allegations of theft from the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma (SNO) through counterfeit checks associated with an account that may have contained Federal funds.Our investigation determined that multiple individuals from the Wichita, KS area cashed counterfeit checks totaling more than...

This management advisory is to alert the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to an incident we discovered in which a DOI employee unnecessarily shared a spreadsheet containing the personally identifiable information (PII) of 182 employees from a number of DOI bureaus.During a recent investigation...