themarshallproject | When you think of a federal sting operation involving weaponry and
military gear, the Government Accountability Office doesn’t immediately
jump to mind. The office is tasked with auditing other federal agencies
to root out fraud and abuse, usually by asking questions and poring over
paperwork.
This year, the agency went a little more cowboy. The GAO created a
fictitious law enforcement agency — complete with a fake website and a
bogus address that traced back to an empty lot — and applied for
military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.
And in less than a week, they got it.
A GAO report
issued this week says the agency’s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2
million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles,
simulated M-16A2 rifles and pipe bomb equipment from the Defense
Department’s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law
enforcement with excess materiel. The rifles and bomb equipment could
have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.
“They never did any verification, like visit our ‘location,’ and most of
it was by email,” said Zina Merritt, director of the GAO’s defense
capabilities and management team, which ran the operation. “It was like
getting stuff off of eBay.”
