Friday, August 17, 2007

It's time for a new annual award.

I'm calling it the "Annie Donnelly Memorial Award", and it goes to the most brazen example of thievery or embezzlement every year. Accountants are not eligible, as this is an amateur award. Bonus points are awarded if the arresting officer says something like "Did you really think you were going to get away with this?" when the contestant is inevitably caught with their hand in the cookie jar and Oreo crumbs smeared all over their face.

Last year, the eponymous winner walked away with the award thanks to the chutzpah she showed in walking away with 2.3 million dollars from the medical group for which she worked. Over three and a half years, those checks for bogus tongue depressor orders can really add up. She blew the wad on Lotto tickets.

Ms. Donnelly wouldn't have stood a chance this year, however. This year's winners, Darlene and Charlene Corley of Lexington, South Carolina, discovered that when their parts business filled small parts orders for the military marked "priority", nobody gave them any guff about shipping costs. Realizing that they weren't going to get rich selling $0.89 split washers to the Air Force, they decided to get rich by billing the USAF $293,451 to ship said washer. Hey, it was priority. In six years' time, they managed to ship $68,000 worth of screws and washers to the military for only $20,500,000 in shipping costs. Eventually somebody noticed, of course, and the joyride at taxpayer expense came to a screeching halt in the grey bar motel, but you have to admit that the brazenness of the thing was just breathtaking.

It's not too early to start working on next year's award. Remember, brazenness and "How in the name of all that's holy did you think you were going to get away with that?" count the heaviest in scoring. Professionals need not apply.

11 comments:

Carteach said...

For folks like this, I think it would be Ok to be oriental in our disciplinary actions.

Really, sometimes a little execution could be a good thing.

Better yet, since they stole in better part from the military, lets let the front line troops suggest a creative punishment, to be televised.

The mind boggles.....

Unknown said...

I'm not usually fond of the medieval aspects of Islamic jurisprudence, but in cases like this a chopped-off right hand doesn't seem unreasonable.

Anonymous said...

I nominate the woman here in Union County Arkansas who helped herself to multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars from her CHURCH!
LOL I see my word verification thingy ends in"loot"!
2dogs

Anonymous said...

See, if they had just kept their greed lower, sayyy, a grand a part, they probably would still be raking in the money. True, they'd only have made 680,000 dollars, but that's still a lot better than being caught. And they also should have taken more vacations and then deposited as much of the money as possible in offshore accounts given that sooner or later, someone would probably notice. These people have no understanding about how to run a proper con.

Anonymous said...

I'd say they pretty did and will get away with it. I doubt that the .gov will recover a penny on the dollar of these "charges"
What do you want to bet that this business was set up under the auspicies of the "minority owned business incentives" program?
emdfl

Matt G said...

"Professionals need not apply."

Bah. I get one of those a week.

Wait-- do you mean professional mess-makers, or professional mess-fixers?

Anonymous said...

Sadly, this is chicken feed compared to what's going on in Iraq. Truck blew a tire? Destroy the vehicle and shove it in the ditch.

Anyway, stealing from the government is not possible, since they don't legally own anything.

And of course, your extorted taxes don't go to pay for government expenditures, they go back to the Fed to pay the eternal interest on the debt loaned to the Government. So, none of us are really involved here.

Tam said...

"Truck blew a tire? Destroy the vehicle and shove it in the ditch."

I take it you're a motor pool troop in the sandbox?

Anonymous said...

And they would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for those snooping kids.

Anonymous said...

This just goes to show what pappy used to say.

"Smart thieves don't get caught, greedy ones do"

If they were willing to settle for say $500 to ship every part they probably still would be chugging along with their scam and would be out of jail, but no, they got greedy and it caught up with them.

Cybrludite said...

I think I've done business with some of their spiritual kinfolk on eBay...