Former CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to $194 Million Scam

A former senior official at the Central Intelligence Agency is admitting to carrying out a scheme that cost taxpayers approximately $194 million.David Rush pleaded guilty Tuesday in the Eastern District of Virginia to a decade long fraud. According to court documents, Rush held a top secret/sensitive compartmented information security clearance. He reached that position, in part, by lying about his education and military experience.As part of a plea to a single count of wire fraud, Rush also disclosed details about passing along top secret information to a foreign official about an American “clandestine human source” that could “endanger the safety and life of the human source” and the government officers working with the source.Rush created fictitious government programs to obtain millions in government funds. He constructed what is known as a classified black box, which is used to hide the most sensitive intelligence operations from scrutiny. Rush’s bogus program claimed to be making highly classified preparations to keep the federal government functioning in the event of nuclear war.Rush got approval to buy gold bars as part of the operation and directed approximately $145 million in wire transfers that he ultimately used to purchase luxury real estate, watches, and at least one car. In May, the FBI searched Rush’s Ashburn, Virginia home as part of an unrelated timecard fraud investigation. What they found stunned them — 298 gold bars, more than $2 million in cash, and more than 30 luxury watches, including Rolexes. Rush has remained jailed since his arrest. He is scheduled to be sentenced in January and faces up to 20 years in prison.Rush’s lies started before he was even hired by the spy agency. Court documents show he falsified his academic credentials and lied about serving as a Navy pilot. An investigation into timecard discrepancies having to do with another lie, that he was actively serving in the Navy Reserves, led to his downfall.“Federal employees are entrusted with serving the American people, not themselves,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “The Trump Administration is committed to rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, including by prosecuting those who foolishly defraud American taxpayers.”Rush worked in a CIA program that develops espionage tools to support American spies abroad. Several senior CIA officials who served at nearby Langley were placed on administrative leave after Rush was arrested over a failure to act on warning signs and mishandling Rush’s requests to seed his “special access programs.”

Former CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to $194 Million Scam

Former CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to $194 Million Scam

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