You've Got to Pick-a-Pocket

You see, Oliver...
[sung] In this life, one thing counts
In the bank, large amounts
I'm afraid these don't grow on trees,
You've got to pick-a-pocket or two.
You've got To Pick-a-Pocket or Two lyrics, from Oliver!

See the latest addition to the Department of Justice's website, "Indictment of Five Defendants in Case Involving Bribery, Fraud and Money Laundering Scheme in Al-Hillah, Iraq."

The case involves the theft of millions of dollars over a two-year period, December 2003 through December 2005, from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, the CPA being the entity created by the United States and the United Kingdom to rebuild Iraq. The plot is better than any Perry Mason.

The indictment charges five people, "three former officers of the United States Army, and two U.S. civilians, for their roles in a complex bribery scheme," in which "they traded their integrity for cash, computers and luxury automobiles," said Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty. So the government allowed this corruption, and in fact at some level, condoned it. The contractors were approved by this administration.

The booty included "a long list of extravagant things, more than $1 million in cash, a Cadillac Escalade, a Lexus, a Porsche, a GMC Yukon, a Nissan 350Z sports car, a Cessna airplane, real estate, a motorcycle, jewelry, computers, business class airline tickets..."

"These defendants actually took bricks of stolen cash, cash that was stolen from the CPA, and smuggled them out of Iraq and back to the United States for their own personal use. In one trip, one defendant carried more than $300,000. Two of the defendants even went so far as to use the money from this scheme to build a new hot tub and deck on their own home in New Jersey, according to the indictment."

The court transcript noted that, "(t)his is also a story about the importance of whistleblowers. This case evolved from an official who worked in that office and came in and told us the truth about what was going on there."

The complete transcript can be found at PRNewswire.

--by Lisa