Federal Reports

Umer Hassan Mir, of South Amboy, New Jersey, was sentenced on February 8, 2023, in U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, to five months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay restitution of $78,000. Mir pleaded guilty on July 12, 2022, to entering fraudulent charges on General Service Administration fuel cards and other corporate credit cards, including at least four cards assigned to Amtrak vehicles. Mir made the fraudulent charges from February 2018 through August 2021 while working as the manager and attendant at a gas station in Metuchen, New Jersey. Mir would manually enter credit card information he collected during legitimate fuel transactions into the point-of-sale terminal at the station and withdraw cash from the register in the amount of the fraudulent transactions. He used the funds from the fraudulent transactions to pay for personal expenses and to pay another gas station employee for working extra hours on Mir’s behalf.Agents and personnel from the Amtrak Office of Inspector General; General Services Administration OIG; and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Philadelphia Division, investigated this case.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) assessed the oversight and stewardship of funds by the Northern Arizona VA Health Care System. The review team looked at four areas to determine if appropriate controls and oversight were in place for open obligations oversight, purchase card use, inventory and supply management, and pharmacy operations. The team reviewed available data from fiscal year 2022. The report includes the following findings:• Inactive obligations were not always being reviewed, some were not deobligated, and quality assurance reviews were not always completed.• The healthcare system did not always reconcile transactions promptly or consider using contracts.• The healthcare system needs to improve the accuracy of inventory data.• The healthcare system could increase inventory turnover and needs to ensure the required reconciliation process is completed.The OIG made 10 recommendations to the healthcare system director: ensure finance office staff and initiating services know to conduct reviews on all inactive open obligations and deobligate any identified excess funds; ensure finance office staff are conducting the accounting operations finance quality assurance review, including the review of undelivered orders; establish controls to confirm approving officials and purchase cardholders review their purchases and make sure contracting is used when appropriate; review for overcharges all invoices for continuous positive airway pressure machines; develop a control to ensure supporting documentation is received from vendors that ship directly to veterans; ensure all supplies are entered into the Generic Inventory Package; implement a plan to achieve an inventory turnover rate closer to the Veterans Health Administration-recommended level; develop a plan to align inventory management practices with VHA policy; and ensure reconciliation of invoices with purchase orders as required under the B09 reconciliation process, which is how VA medical center pharmacies assure they are making correct payments for the drugs they receive.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not provide sufficient oversight of Project Airbridge, a COVID-19 initiative. Under unprecedented pressure to mitigate disruptions in global medical supply chains, FEMA established Project Airbridge.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted this inspection to assess the stewardship and oversight of funds by the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in California. This inspection assessed financial activities and administrative processes to determine whether appropriate controls and oversight were in place. These included open obligations, purchase card use, inventory and supply management, and pharmacy operations.Because personnel were not aware of review requirements, the team could not verify that anyone reviewed 10 obligations as required. VA’s reconciliation reports in the financial and accounting systems reflected accurate dates and order amounts for the 10 obligations; however, two had residual funds totaling approximately $3,102 that should have been deobligated.When assessing purchase card use, the team estimated that the healthcare system could have identified noncompliance errors in approximately 7,200 of 16,700 transactions, totaling about $26.9 million in costs. The team found that the effectiveness and efficiency of inventory management could improve by ensuring stock levels and inventory values are correct, establishing processes and procedures for monitoring inventory, implementing a training plan, and ensuring supply chain performance measures are maintained.The team found that pharmacy efficiency could improve by narrowing the gap between observed and expected costs, bringing turnover rates closer to the recommended level, and meeting reconciliation reporting requirements.The OIG made nine recommendations to the healthcare system director and one to the director of contracting for the Network Contracting Office 21 including making staff aware of requirements, conducting reviews on inactive open obligations, deobligating excess funds, complying with record retention requirements, and establishing controls for purchase card and contract use. The recommendations also specified providing supply chain procedures training, improving inventory system data reliability, ensuring physical inventory compliance, implementing a plan to increase inventory turnover, and consistent and timely reconciliation.