[Vision2020] Lieutenant Who Robbed Ship Fell for E-mail Scam

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (July 5, 2007) edition of the Army Times' Daily News Roundup -

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Lt. who robbed ship fell for e-mail scam

By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Jul 5, 2007 18:22:57 EDT

SAN DIEGO - A Navy supply corps officer on the frigate McClusky who pleaded
guilty to stealing money from his ship's safe will be confined in the brig
and could be dismissed from the service.

Lt. Milton T. Guy, who was the ship's disbursing officer, received a
28-month sentence and a $14,000 fine after he pleaded guilty June 26 to
wrongful appropriation, dereliction of duty and making a false statement,
according to an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Guy pleaded guilty and was sentenced after a general court-martial, said
Walter T. Ham IV, a Navy Region Southwest spokesman.

The Union-Tribune, citing court documents, said Guy took the money to use as
payments to collect a $260,000 inheritance he believed was owed to him. The
purported inheritance, however, was part of an Internet scam pitched by a
man named Barnabus, who in e-mails and telephone calls to Guy contended that
he represented the Nigerian government and claimed he was handling the
disposal of a $2.6 million estate belonging to a Mark Guy.

According to documents, Guy stole small sums of money, in total around
$120,000 to $140,000, out of the McClusky's funds from October 2004 to July
2005, and he sent most of the money to Barnabus although he used several
thousand dollars to buy a laptop computer and to put a down payment on a car
and a deposit on an apartment, according to the newspaper.

A May 2006 audit by the U.S. Pacific Fleet found that money was missing from
the McClusky's accounts.

Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for Naval Surface Forces in Coronado,
Calif., said that the Navy uses routine audits to help keep ship's funds
secure. "It is the checks and balances that we have throughout the fleet
that precludes people from being able to get away with this," Campbell said.

With the new Navy Cash financial system, the Navy's ships are moving away
from keeping large sums of cash aboard in favor of an electronic, cashless
system.

"Navy Cash is a great new program that is being implemented across the
fleet," she said. "It's the way now that we are keeping much less cash in
the ships in general."

Internet scams such as the so-called "Nigerian letter" are well-known
schemes that have exploded with the rise of spam e-mails. Such e-mails claim
that the recipient is owed large sums of money that require a transferring
of funds before the full amount can be collected, and other scams include
seemingly dire requests for financial help.

"It is incumbent upon everybody to be too cautious," Campbell said. "If it's
too good to be true, it probably is."

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Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has
with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear,
maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own
faith, either one God, three Gods, no God or twenty Gods; and let government
protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse, or
loss of property, for his religious opinions...." 

-John Leland, colonial-era Baptist minister and religious liberty advocate,
The Rights of Conscience Inalienable, 1791 pamphlet