Purchasing Card Supervisor Convicted Of Card Abuse
A supervisory accountant with the National Science Foundation (NSF), whose job included speaking and writing on the topic of misuse of government travel cards, was sentenced to serve 20 weekends in jail as a condition of two years probation, and a $1,000 fine for using her own card on 47 occasions to make personal purchases or cash withdrawals.
In addition, Cheryl L. Kaminski, who was in charge of the NSF Government Travel Card program, was ordered to forfeit her government job and is prohibited from obtaining federal employment in the future.
The conviction resulted from an investigation by the NSF Office of Inspector General (OIG) into misuse of government travel cards.
Kaminski, a federal employee since 1990, pled guilty in December 2003 to concealing, falsifying and destroying documents belonging to the United States of America. An investigation revealed that between September 2000 and March 2003, Kaminski tried to conceal her own misuses of the card by removing records of her own transactions from documents she provided to the OIG which was auditing NSF employees use of travel cards.
Again, in February 2003, Kaminski provided sanitized records to the OIG which did not include records of her own misuse. During this time she prepared monthly reports to enable corrective action for employees who were delinquent or misusing their travel cards. She did not include her own personal charges on these reports, again to conceal her own misuse.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Kathleen M. Kahoe.