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Fraud and Gravestone Stealing at the VA
One former VA supervisor is sentenced for accepting $1 million in kickbacks, while another employee pilfered stone from a cemetery to install flooring at his property.
The Veterans Affairs Department employs more than 300,000 people, so there are bound to be more than a few bad apples in the bunch. This week, one former employee was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for fraud, while another worker will plead guilty to stealing gravestones from a VA cemetery.
Jarod Machinga, a former supervisory engineer at a VA facility in East Orange, New Jersey, is heading to prison for accepting more than $1.2 million in kickback payments from contractors with whom he had relationships, and for falsely claiming one of the companies was owned by a service-disabled veteran. “Machinga partnered with a person – identified in the information as ‘Individual 1’—to set up three companies that could be used to obtain work,” said a Justice Department press release announcing the former employee’s 46-month prison sentence. “He then directed more than $6 million worth of VA construction projects to those companies.” Machinga admitted he accepted the kickbacks “in exchange for his official action and influence between 2007 and July 2012,” the press release stated.
The company Machinga misrepresented as service-disabled veteran-owned, received more than $3 million from the VA related to the contract.
In a separate case, an employee at the Rhode Island Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery in Exeter, R.I., will plead guilty to stealing “worn” or “broken” granite gravestones and other items from the cemetery to use for flooring in his garage and shed. Investigators also found a box of American flags allegedly stolen from the cemetery at Maynard’s residence.
Maynard’s arraignment is scheduled for July 13, where he plans to “plead guilty as charged by way of an information with theft of government property,” according to a Justice press release. “An information is merely an allegation and is not evidence of guilt,” the department stated.
It’s unclear whether Maynard is still a VA employee. Justice and VA did not immediately respond to questions over whether Maynard remains on the government payroll or not.
(Image via Brberrys / Shutterstock.com)