Federal Reports

o We determined that that some Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) senior managers, including former Director Connie Patrick, failed to exercise the judgment, stewardship, and leadership expected of DHS senior officials. We recommended that FLETC complete its development of a nepotism policy, train its employees when that policy is complete, and review and propose necessary changes to its procedures for processing and authorizing travel by the FLETC Director. We also recommended that the DHS Under Secretary for Management review all travel expenses for DHS Component Heads that exceed GSA rates and disallow any excess costs that are not properly justified. We made four recommendations that will help ensure that that all FLETC employees, including those who comprise the senior leadership, comply with the policies, procedures, and ethical standards that govern the conduct of all DHS employees. The Department concurred with all four recommendations.

The OIG investigated allegations that between 2013 and 2017, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) employee wrongfully purchased approximately $6,000 worth of office and printer supplies with a Government purchase card. We also investigated whether the employee’s supervisor failed to review and monitor the purchase card transactions.We found that the employee made unauthorized purchases of supplies and used them for printing that was outside the scope of her assigned duties and unauthorized by her supervisors. The printing included FWS related news articles and birthday cards for coworkers. We did not find any personal gain by the employee from the unauthorized purchases.We also found that the employee’s current supervisor reviewed the purchase card transactions as required. The current supervisor had only recently been promoted, however, and was not the required reviewer until 2016. The current supervisor also asked repeatedly for the purchase card statements from the employee, who acknowledged she had fallen behind in providing the statements to her supervisor.We referred this case to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming, which declined to prosecute.This is a summary of an investigative report that was issued to the Acting Director, FWS.

An Amtrak Track Supervisor in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, was terminated from employment following an administrative hearing on May 24, 2018, for theft related to time and attendance fraud.