A former Interior Department worker got off with a mere five years' probation Monday after confessing to a scam that lined his pockets with over $139,000 of taxpayer money. George Thomas Onwiler, 49, from Hayfork, California, pled guilty to a single count of wire fraud back in November last year and faced the legal music earlier this week when U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi served up his sentence, according to the Department of Justice.
Onwiler's scheme, which ran from May 2018 through April 2020, involved bogus payments to non-existent electrical supply companies. As an electrician for the Bureau of Reclamation in Yuma, Arizona, Onwiler had access to a government credit card which he used to funnel funds to himself via PayPal and Square, under the guise of procurement for his work. The sham transfers totalled up to $139,168.02, the exact amount Onwiler is now court-ordered to pay back in restitution.
The trickery unraveled after an internal investigation by the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Reclamation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristen Brook, from the District of Arizona, handled prosecuting for the case that has put a spotlight on potential vulnerabilities in government procurement processes and the oversight of employee-issued credit cards.
While Onwiler has avoided a prison cell, his probationary sentence carries the weight of his crime – at least financially, compelling him to reimburse the government for each penny of the stolen money. Onwiler's fraudulent wire transfers, which he masked as legitimate purchases for the Bureau, were anything but.
