Former Department of Defense Employee Pleads Guilty to Defrauding the United States

       By: U.S. Department of Justice
Posted: 2007-09-15 07:15:11
A former civilian employee of the Department of Defense (DOD) has pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States of tens of thousands of dollars, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.

Saul Granados, 26, of El Paso, Tex., pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge David Briones of the Western District of Texas, to one count of wire fraud.

Granados was employed by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), a component of DOD, and was stationed at Ft. Bliss, Tex. As part of his plea, Granados admitted that from January through March 2007, he and a coworker devised a scheme to defraud the United States through the misuse of a DOD pay-processing computer system. Both Granados and his coworker improperly accessed the system and inputted fraudulent pay adjustments which resulted in wire transmissions from DFAS headquarters in Indiana into Granados' bank account in Texas. Granados also admitted that he coded the transactions to make it appear as though the payments were being made to a former member of the Arizona National Guard, when in fact they were deposited into his own bank account.

Granados faces up to twenty years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release following incarceration. Sentencing was set for Dec. 18, 2007.

These cases are being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Michael Ferrara and John P. Pearson of the Public Integrity Section, which is headed by Section Chief William M. Welch II. These cases are being investigated by a task force of agents from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, the Internal Revenue Service-CID, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. The prosecution has received substantial assistance from the U.S. Army Audit Agency.
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