The DEA Paid An Amtrak Secretary $854,460 for Free Passenger Lists

The DEA Paid An Amtrak Secretary $854,460 for Free Passenger Lists

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Drug Enforcement Administration paid an Amtrak employee hundreds of thousands of dollars over two decades to obtain confidential information it could have gotten for free, according to internal investigators at the railroad.

According to a report released Monday by Amtrak's inspector general, the DEA paid an Amtrak secretary $854,460 to be an informant. The employee was not publicly identified except as a "secretary to a train and engine crew."

Amtrak's own police agency is already in a joint drug enforcement task force that includes the DEA. According to the inspector general, that task force can obtain Amtrak confidential passenger reservation information at no cost.

The report said the secretary was allowed to retire, rather than face administrative discipline, after the discovery that the employee had "regularly" sold private passenger information since 1995 without Amtrak's approval, said the IG's summary.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the $854,460 an unnecessary expense and asked for further information about the incident in a letter he released Monday to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart. Grassley said the incident "raises some serious questions about the DEA's practices and damages its credibility to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies."

bigstory.ap.org...

More of your tax dollars at work. Boy, I bet those guys feel stupid... hmm... maybe they are!

LMAO. WTG for the secretary.

I ask you if someone offered "X" amount of dollars for info. you knew they could obtain for no money would you tell the person?

I wouldn't.

You should pay for being lazy or ignorant. (lazy.)

Silly D EA. I would have done it for half.
I wonder if they are taking applications?

Duh!
Has the DEA been using the drugs that they seize?

originally posted by: butcherguy
Duh!
Has the DEA been using the drugs that they seize?

No, they've been recycling them back onto the street, so they can pay for info they could have gotten for free...

Des

Well, at least the government returned some of the money it got from us to a regular person instead of a military contractor. I hope the woman saved a little of this for retirement. I wonder if she had to pay income tax and SS on that money or whether she can use it to increase her social security payments when she retires.

Be the pits if she didn't claim it and she was supposed to. The IRS will probably be calling on her now that they have read this.

originally posted by: rickymouse
Well, at least the government returned some of the money it got from us to a regular person instead of a military contractor. I hope the woman saved a little of this for retirement. I wonder if she had to pay income tax and SS on that money or whether she can use it to increase her social security payments when she retires.

Be the pits if she didn't claim it and she was supposed to. The IRS will probably be calling on her now that they have read this.

Wonder what category she would have to file it under?

It's like that story in The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll, where a kid hacked into AT&T, downloaded a technical specification. The lawyers claimed it contained confidential information worth over $800,000. The defence pointed out that the same document could be purchased for under $25 from the official technical ordering hotline.

a reply to: stormcell

Maybe discretionary income.

Wonder how this simple employee could launder that much money way above their salary. All that undeclared income. . .