Former Acting Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Charles Edwards was indicted last week on 16-counts of fraud, theft of government property, identity theft and more.
"A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a 16-count indictment against a former Acting Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a former subordinate for their alleged theft of proprietary software and confidential databases from the U.S. government as part of a scheme to defraud the U.S. government," the Department of Justice released in a statement.
Edwards left the DHS Office of the Inspector General in 2013, but used his relationships at the Department for his own personal and financial gain.
"According to the allegations in the indictment, from October 2014 to April 2017, Edwards, Venkata, and others executed a scheme to defraud the U.S. government by stealing confidential and proprietary software from DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), along with sensitive government databases containing personal identifying information (PII) of DHS and USPS employees, so that Edwards’s company, Delta Business Solutions, could later sell an enhanced version of DHS-OIG’s software to the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Agriculture at a profit," DOJ says. "Although Edwards had left DHS-OIG in December 2013, he continued to leverage his relationship with Venkata and other DHS-OIG employees to steal the software and the sensitive government databases."
Murali Yamazula Venkata, who worked for Edwards at DHS, has been charged with destroying government documents in addition to fraud.
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