An agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives used a government-issued credit card for cash advances so he could go to the casino while he was on duty.
An investigation by the bureau’s inspector general found that the agent was later promoted, and is now a Special Agent in Charge.
The investigation determined that the agent “gambled on duty, misused his government travel card to facilitate his gambling, and misused his assigned government vehicle by using it to travel to casinos.”
“By gambling while on duty, the [Special Agent in Charge] SAC violated federal regulations that prohibit federal employees from gambling while on duty,” the agency watchdog said in a summary of the investigation posted Monday. “In addition, the SAC violated ATF policy by, among other things, misusing his government travel card to obtain cash advances to gamble, and using his assigned government vehicle to travel to casinos to gamble, which is not an ‘official purpose’ for which use of the government vehicle is authorized.”
The inspector general said the agent has not been prosecuted, and they have turned over their findings to the bureau for “appropriate action.”
Click here to read more from The Washington Free Beacon.
Stories like this are not uncommon at our federal bureaucracies. Bureaucrats are un-elected, and the bureaucracies they work for lack any real incentive to serve well or efficiently. So why does our federal government continue to rely on them so heavily? They do so because the expansion of federal agencies is the primary means by which they expand their power and jurisdiction. Enough is enough. It's time to shrink the federal government back down to size, and we can do it with an Article V Convention of States.
