Federal Reports

The OIG investigated allegations that Doris White, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Eagle Butte, SD, stole trust income from her family members who had inherited income-generating land. The Bureau of Indian Affairs held the land in trust and the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) administered the income.We substantiated the allegation. White admitted to us that her family members were not aware of the oil and gas royalty income generated by the land and that between 2005 and 2017, she stole nearly $1.4 million from their accounts. She intentionally concealed the lease income by hiding, and eventually destroying, the family members’ account statements. White said she used the stolen money on herself and her family members.White pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota, Central Division, to one count of larceny, 18 U.S.C. §§ 661 and 1153, and was sentenced to 3 months in prison. She agreed to pay $1,398,713.83 in restitution to her family members.

A prior OIG audit found that New York made more than $7 million in unallowable Federal Medicaid payments to different managed care organizations (MCOs) for the same month for beneficiaries assigned more than one Medicaid identification (ID) number. A recent analysis of Medicaid data showed that New York continued to make these improper payments despite the improvements it made to its processes for identifying beneficiaries with multiple Medicaid ID numbers.

Adam Micek, a resident of Queens, New York, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, on February 20, 2020, to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his involvement in an Amtrak eVoucher scheme. Micek and his co-conspirators used stolen credit card information to make unauthorized purchases of Amtrak tickets and then cancelled or exchanged those tickets for eVouchers. Subsequently, they sold the fraudulently obtained eVouchers on the internet. Micek’s sentencing is pending.

For Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Officeof Inspector General (OIG) contracted with Brown & Company CPAs and ManagementConsultants, PLLC (Brown & Company) to conduct a performance audit of EEOC’s compliancewith the provisions of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA).FISMA requires agencies to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide informationsecurity program to provide information security for the information and information systems thatsupport the operations and assets of the agency, including those provided or managed by anotheragency, contractor, or other source.

The Office of the Inspector General audited the effectiveness of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) implementation of a new identity and access management (IAM) solution. We found the TVA project team has effectively implemented the IAM program and related projects. TVA expanded the IAM program to include additional user access management tools and processes, which included privileged identity management. We identified documentation concerns regarding privileged identity management that were (1) communicated to the project management team during the audit and (2) addressed by TVA management prior to completion of rollout.

During fiscal year 2019, we reviewed package scanning procedures at 25 Postal Service delivery units to determine if employees were properly scanning packages. During our audits, we found that Postal Service employees were not always following package scanning procedures at 21 of the 25 units. Customers rely on accurate scan data to track their packages in real time. When employees do not scan mailpieces correctly, customers are unable to determine the actual status of their packages. By improving scanning operations, management can potentially improve mail visibility, increase customer satisfaction, and enhance the customer experience and the Postal Service brand.