The fake CIA spy who defrauded the Environmental Protection Agency out of nearly $1 million has been released from prison.
John C. Beale, a top EPA official who embarked on a decades long con earning $900,000 in fraudulent travel vouchers and illegal bonuses while pretending to be a spy, was moved to a halfway house in Philadelphia to serve out the remainder of his 32-month sentence.
Government Executive reports:
The longtime Environmental Protection Agency clean-air expert who skipped work while posing as a CIA agent has been released from prison and is now in a halfway house. […]
Beale was moved this spring from the federal correctional institute in Cumberland, Md., to a Philadelphia facility, Government Executive has confirmed with the Bureau of Prisons. He must sleep in the facility supervised by a bureau Residential Reentry Management field office and perform work and program activity during the day on a conditional basis.
Set for release on June 1, Beale is also paying the outstanding portion of his restitution through his federal annuity.
Beale pled guilty in October 2013 to charges of felony theft of government property in a case congressional investigators compared to Catch Me If You Can. Over the course of 13 years Beale defrauded the federal government out of nearly $900,000, flying first class and staying in five-star hotels while pretending to be a CIA spy.
The EPA waited three years to act on warnings that Beale was collecting illegal and excessive salary bonuses. During the con, Beale spent two and a half years absent from work while still being paid.