A technology officer with faked college degrees resigned from the Interior Department after he was busted. He was then hired by the Census Bureau.
From Ars Technica:
The Department of the Interior’s computer systems played a major role in the breach of systems belonging to the Office of Personnel Management, and DOI officials were called before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the over 3,000 vulnerabilities in agency systems discovered in a penetration test run by Interior’s Inspector General office. But there was one unexpected revelation during the hearing: a key Interior technology official who had access to sensitive systems for over five years had lied about his education, submitting falsified college transcripts produced by an online service.
The official, Faisal Ahmed, was assistant director of the Interior’s Office of Law Enforcement and Security from 2007 to 2013, heading its Technology division. He claimed to have a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a master’s degree in technology management from the University of Central Florida—but he never attended either of those schools. He resigned from his position at Interior when the fraudulent claim was exposed by a representative of the University of Central Florida’s alumni association, who discovered he had never attended the school after Ahmed accepted and then suddenly deleted a connection with her on LinkedIn.
After being found out, Faisal didn’t have to stop working for the government altogether. Nope. He just dusted his pants off and got himself a brand-new government job at the Census Bureau. He is reported to still be working there.
From the National Journal’s coverage:
Ahmed’s name is redacted in the report, but Wyoming Rep. Cynthia Lummis referred to him by his full name multiple times while discussing the report at a Wednesday subcommittee hearing of the House Oversight Committee. Lummis is chairwoman of the committee’s subpanel on the Interior Department.
According to the report, Ahmed obtained false university transcripts through an online service. He claimed to have obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh and a master’s degree from the University of Central Florida, and submitted fake transcripts to his government file.
Lummis said Wednesday she was disturbed by the level of access that Ahmed had. “I’m a little concerned—no, well, I’m more than a little concerned that he had access to law enforcement sensitive materials and other secure information, that he had falsified his background, and that now it appears that he is working for another federal agency, the U.S. Census Bureau,” she said.