Yes, indeed, you can buy just about anything on eBay, including a cut-rate (albeit illegal) ride to work on Washington’s public transit systems.
That’s the conclusion of an investigation by the Government Accountability Office into a program that allows 300,000 federal employees to be reimbursed for commuting costs.
According to this morning’s Washington Post:
The program, which covers 300,000 federal employees nationwide, has been abused by workers across a variety of agencies, the Government Accountability Office will report to Congress today. Workers in the Washington region alone have defrauded the government of at least $17 million a year, with the actual figure probably several million dollars higher, according to the GAO.
Employees have taken the benefit vouchers, known locally as Metrocheks, and turned them into a kind of black-market currency, selling them – often at a discount off the face value – to buyers who can use them to ride Metro, regional buses or commuter railroads.
Monitoring sales on eBay over three days last August, GAO investigators found 58 people selling Metrochek cards and investigated 20, all of whom were federal employees.
The litany of those nabbed and their lame excuses are truly worth a read.
Of course, the fact that eBay is a haven for such shenanigans should shock no one.
Symantec recently reported an e-mail scam directed at eBay users that combined legitimate eBay auctions and a Windows Trojan that intercepts Web traffic. And others have been busy hawking iPhones that do not exist.
The auction site’s CEO Meg Whitman has called for greater cooperation among the law-abiding to head off security problems such as phishing and data breaches.
As for what might best deter future cases such as the sale of those commuting vouchers? Well, not much can be done about basic human greed.
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