TVA Waste and Abuse

Posted Tuesday, March 3, 2009, at 1:40 PM

I bumped into this story this morning about fraud, waste, and abuse of TVA issued expense credit cards and I must say that I am disturbed by it. In the military, expense cards of this nature were common, but fraud was not. Why? Accountability. If a purchase was made on the expense card, the user had to document every single purchase with supporting documents. These people at TVA have been on a spending spree and many of the people charged with ensuring that the purchases were necessary have been negligent. These people should be relieved of their duties in my opinion. The report states that televisions, video games, college tuition, and alcohol were charged during 2008. I read parts of the official TVA report and I could not believe the level of negligence that has been going on at this agency.

The inspector general's report: http://oig.tva.gov/PDF/09rpts/2007-11481...

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I would be MUCH more willing to accept the professional licensing and memberships to professional organizations than weddingbands.com.

I especially liked the "purchase of software to erase evidence of internet usage". Whoever it was that purchased (signed for) this purchase should be fired on the spot. That alone is evidence that they were trying to circumvent IT security policies (not that I'm biased about this particular thing).

-- Posted by Thom on Tue, Mar 3, 2009, at 9:27 PM

I love the section titled "Purchases Disallowed by TVA Policy". It states that out of 299 transactions sampled, 15 transactions totaling $15,078 are not allowed under the TVA's card policy. These charges include purchases for furniture, tuition, travel expenses, cold medicine, and memberships to professional organizations. A 5% rate of fraud is absolutely unacceptable.

-- Posted by nathan.evans on Tue, Mar 3, 2009, at 5:47 PM

Nice to know some of my money went to weddingbands.com.

Nice job digging that up Nathan. Since they used data mining software to uncover all this, I surely hope TVA has the backbone to send all these folks a bill for the crap that was bought.

-- Posted by Tim Baker on Tue, Mar 3, 2009, at 5:21 PM

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Is that why my electric bill was soo HIGH?

-- Posted by 4fabfelines on Tue, Mar 3, 2009, at 4:37 PM

I think Im gonna go put my application in. I could use some of that action.

-- Posted by greasemonkey on Tue, Mar 3, 2009, at 3:37 PM

Why does this not surprise me!

-- Posted by Dianatn on Tue, Mar 3, 2009, at 2:58 PM

Xbox 360s, computers, trips, must be nice working for TVA. No work, all play pays very well.

-- Posted by Evil Monkey on Tue, Mar 3, 2009, at 2:21 PM