Pat Dollard | Young Americans

It’s hard not to recall the pain-in-the neck attempts to paint those in the Bush Administration (including the President and the VP themselves) as criminals … and demand investigations … yet, in eight years nothing ever panned-out on those slams.

And here is the Obama Admin. … tax cheats and the like already ripe for the picking, so to speak …

UPDATE 2:

Politico:

D.C. bribery scheme detailed

By Ben Smith

The Washington, D.C., U.S. attorney released documents today in the alleged bribery scheme that led to the arrest of the acting chief security officer in the office of the District’s chief technology officer.

The former CTO, Vivek Kundra, was not a target of the investigation, though the arrest of one of his top aides is a black eye for the 300-employee office and its leaders. He left last week to take the post of chief information officer in the Obama administration.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today he didn’t know whether the administration knew of the investigation in advance of Kundra’s appointment.

Yusuf Acar was arrested on charges of bribery, money laundering, wire fraud and conflict of interest; Sushil Bansal was arrested on the first two of those charges.

The application for their arrest warrants, released by the U.S. attorney’s office this afternoon, details tens of thousands of dollars in classic scams: overcharging for products in a fixed bidding process and employing “ghost employees” on contract.

Read the application in full here.

In this case, one of the ghost employees was in fact an undercover FBI agent, and the application includes multiple transcripts of surreptitiously recorded conversations.

Here are the summaries of the two “schemes:”

In one scheme, a quantity of goods is ordered by OCTO from a vendor such as Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation (AITC). The vendor actually orders a lesser number of the item from the distributor, but bills the DC government for the full amount originally requested by OCTO. An OCTO official, such as YUSUF ACAR, falsely certifies that the greater quantity was actually received and the vendor bills the District of Columbia Government for the greater amount and is paid accordingly. The co-conspirators then split the proceeds of the crime.

A second scheme involves billing for “ghost employees”. These are contract employees supposedly hired by a vendor, such as AITC, to perform work under a specific contract for OCTO. However, these ghost employees never actually perform any work under the contract. The vendor, who is involved in the scheme, bills the DC government for the employees’ hours. An OCTO official, such as YUSUF ACAR, approves the timesheet so that the vendor can be paid. The money is then split between the co-conspirators.

UPDATE:

WaPo:

D.C. Official, Contractor Arrested in Bribery Sting

By Del Quentin Wilber

An official in the D.C. government’s office of the chief technology officer and a contractor for the agency were arrested in a federal bribery sting today and the FBI has descended on the office to search for evidence, law enforcement sources said.

Yusuf Acar, 40, was taken into custody this morning by FBI agents at his home in Northwest Washington, the sources said.

Sushil Bansal, a former city employee and a contractor with the technology office, also has been arrested.

The nature of the charges could not be determined. Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, declined to comment on the arrest, saying the case “is under seal.”

Acar, who has worked for the city since 2004, serves as an information systems security officer in the D.C. government and earns $127,468. He worked for Vivek Kundra, the city’s chief technology officer, who recently left D.C. government to become President Obama’s federal chief information officer.

Bansal is president and chief executive of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. According to the AITC Web site, the company received last year several city contracts, including at least one with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

According to D.C. Council records, Bansal’s company was awarded a $10 million, one-year contract in June to provide “information technology services, equipment and software.” Payment, however, was to based on task orders and delivery, meaning the company would not necessarily receive the entire $10 million.

According to his company’s Web site, Bansal used to work in the D.C. government. Last August, he was awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year Award of the Association of Indians in America.

The Office of the Chief Technology Officer has a budget of about $69 million and 298 employees.

Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for the mayor, declined to comment this morning.

WTOP:

WASHINGTON - Two officials in the D.C.’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer have been arrested in a federal bribery sting, sources tell WTOP.

D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer employees Sushil Bansal and 40-year-old Yusuf Acar have been arrested, sources tell WTOP.

Acar was taken into custody Thursday morning by FBI agents at his home in Northwest D.C.

The FBI is now serving a search warrant at the office of D.C.’s Chief Technology Officer, WTOP has learned.

“We are there as part of a continuing ongoing criminal investigation,” FBI Washington Field Office spokesperson Katherine Schweit tells WTOP.

Schweit would not comment on the details of the investigation.

More than a dozen FBI agents - including evidence technicians - at the office, located at 1 Judiciary Square on 4th Street in Northwest, WTOP’s Mark Segraves reports.

Most of the employees have been told to go home. Other employees have been segregated into a waiting room.

Segraves reports the FBI’s search has expanded from 9th floor offices to 10th floor offices.

A spokesman for D.C.’s U.S. Attorney tells WTOP he cannot discuss the investigation, as it is currently sealed.

On March 5, President Barack Obama named D.C. Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra as the federal government’s chief information officer.

Kundra’s last day was March 4.

Kundra, who was in charge of technology in the District since 2007, has been a consultant to Obama since he won the election.

Politico:

FBI raids office of D.C. CTO, Obama appointee

By Ben Smith

Federal agents this morning are searching the office Washington, D.C.’s Chief Technology Officer.

The search of the office at 1 Judiciary Square is part of “an ongoing investigation,” said a spokeswoman for the FBI’s D.C. Field Office, Lindsay Gotwin, said.

She said two men, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal, had been arrested.

Acar is an information security officer who was also, according to online requests for proposals, responsible for contracting. Bansal is listed on the city’s procurement website as the CEO of the Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation, which was awarded two technology contracts last year worth a total of $350,000.

The Washington Post and WTOP Radio report that the men are being held on bribery charges.

The outgoing Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Kundra, was appointed last week Chief Information Officer by the Obama administration. His last day at the city government office was February 4, a spokeswoman for D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, Leslie Kershaw, said. He was appointed to the Washington post in 2007, and held it when Bansal’s contract was awarded.

“We know the FBI is over there but that’s all we know,” said a staffer in the D.C. CTO’s office, Mario Field, who was working from a separate location. Another source familiar with the raid said the FBI had sent all staffers other than senior executives home for the day. WTOP reported that agents are searching the 9th and 10th floors of the building.

A White House spokesman had no immediate comment.

D.C. mayor’s spokeswoman Kershaw said, “Our office has been alerted of FBI’s being at CTO office, but we cannot comment until it’s over and we get more details.”

No one answered a phone listed in Acar’s name.