Investigator sentenced for falsifying security checks
By:
Scott
McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
August 23, 2010
Another investigator for the agency
that conducts security checks for about 90 percent of the federal government
was sentenced in District Court in D.C. for falsifying her reports.
Faye Liner, 55, is the sixth Federal
Investigative Services investigator to be prosecuted in the past year and a
half for falsifying security clearances for the Office of Personnel Management.
Liner, a former OPM special agent,
admitted to lying about nearly half of the background information for more than
100 cases she worked on.
Liner was sentenced to one year of
home confinement and ordered to pay nearly $70,000 in restitution.
Federal authorities said they
considered cases like Liner's to be a national security concern.
"Fabrications are not just
about making false statements. They have the potential to compromise our
national security," OPM Inspector General Patrick McFarland said.
Giving a security clearance or a job
to someone whose background has not been properly vetted can pose a serious
risk to national security and to the effectiveness of the federal civilian
workforce, authorities said.
The Federal Investigative Services
conducts millions of background investigations on federal applicants,
employees, military members and contractor personnel each year.
Investigators interview friends,
family and co-workers, review records and corroborate information.
Most of the discrepancies in the
reports were discovered during follow-up interviews with the sources, who were
asked about the conduct of the investigator, authorities said. In some cases,
the sources said they had never talked to a background investigator.
In one case, the investigator wrote
that a co-worker said one person applying to be an Air Force special agent
liked NASCAR and cookouts and was security conscious. But that interview never
occurred, and the investigator made it up, prosecutors said.
Between 2005 and 2008, Liner worked
on 101 cases, claiming she checked out more than 523 sources. She later
admitted in court to falsifying information about 47 percent of the time, and
OPM had to rework all 101 cases at a cost to taxpayers of $68,000.
Since 2008, federal prosecutors in
the District have convicted six investigators with making false statements.
Other investigators have been charged in Maryland and Connecticut. Some were
OPM employees, and some were contractors to CACI, U.S. Investigation Services
and Kroll, court records said.
The convicted investigators were
involved in hundreds of cases, costing the government hundreds of thousands of
dollars to reinvestigate.