GSA Roundup: Want to steal money from GSA? Turns out it’s pretty easy

With this many skeletons in the General Services Administration’s closet, the agency won’t have to do any Halloween shopping this year. The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that between 2008 and 2010, government contractor Coleen Newton-White and her husband took nearly $300,000 from GSA by stealing agency credit cards from the motor pool in Fort Monroe, Va., and using them to sell discounted fuel to gas station customers.

Newton-White and her husband eventually were caught and convicted of fraud, among other charges, but stealing from GSA has become something of a national sport: Between October 2010 and September 2011, 63 other prosecutions were filed against people who similarly siphoned the agency’s funds, with even more cases flooding the inspector general’s phone line since news of October 2010’s Las Vegas scandal broke.

When Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., appeared on Sunday’s talk shows circuit to call for sweeping investigations into GSA, he also sought to bring yet another former executive’s name into infamy. Daniel Voll, former deputy commissioner of the Public Buildings Service’s Region 9, pleaded guilty to defrauding the government of around $61,000 in April 2010, Fox News recapped Sunday. The Justice Department said Voll used his government-issued credit card to pay for numerous personal expenses -- including spa trips, restaurants and luxury hotels -- between 2005 and 2009. Six months later, Voll’s region partied hard in a luxury hotel with government funds. Lieberman criticized GSA for its “tradition of having each of their regions have a lot of autonomy,” which he said, “was clearly abused in Region 9.”