Climate change expert's fraud was 'crime of massive proportion,' say feds

NBC News ^ | Dec. 16, 2013 | Michael Isikoff

[edwinland]

The EPA’s highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change deserves to go to prison for at least 30 months for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job, say federal prosecutors.

Follow @NBCInvestigates John C. Beale, who pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade, will be sentenced in a Washington, D.C., federal court on Wednesday. In a newly filed sentencing memo, prosecutors said that his lies were a "crime of massive proportion" that were “offensive” to those who actually do dangerous work for the CIA.

Beale’s lawyer, while acknowledging his guilt, has asked for leniency and offered a psychological explanation for the climate expert’s bizarre tales.

[Eleutheria5]

He committed one massive fraud and stole a million for his personal use, instead of sticking to his job of committing multiple massive frauds so as to aid the federal government in stealing billions and grabbing more power.

[tomkat]

.. These include helping to rewrite the Clean Air Act in 1990, heading up EPA delegations to United Nations conferences on climate change in 2000 and 2001, and helping to negotiate agreements to reduce carbon emissions ...

Hell, that's about enough for a noose, right there.

/.02

[alstewartfan]

ALL the “climate change” experts are frauds. Should they all be jailed? That’s rhetorical.

[unixfox]

30 months? how about 30 years along with everyone else who knew and did nothing.

For sure. I fired 3 employees at once for not telling me about another employee they knew was embezzling from me.

And get this...the thief filed an unemployment claim. He's lucky I didn't send him to jail.

[thorvaldr]

Maybe they considered that as “a leading expert on climate change” his JOB was to commit massive fraud.

[Brad from Tennessee]

[Beale’s lawyer John Kern said, “Mr. Beale has come to recognize that, beyond the motive of greed, his theft and deception were animated by a highly self-destructive and dysfunctional need to engage in excessively reckless, risky behavior.” Kern also said Beale was driven “to manipulate those around him through the fabrication of grandiose narratives … that are fueled by his insecurities.”]

This is an unusual defense in that Kern argues that because Beale is a psychopath it was difficult for Beale not to engage in criminal conduct.