ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A former official with the CIA is accused of stealing millions of dollars’ worth of gold bars from the federal government.
David Rush is charged with criminal theft of public money in federal court in Virginia, The Associated Press reported.
He was jailed pending a detention hearing, The New York Times reported. He had waived his right to a preliminary hearing, and his case has been sent to a grand jury, according to Fox News.
The FBI was alerted to Rush’s allegations by the CIA, according to the newspaper.
“After a C.I.A. internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the F.B.I. for a law enforcement investigation,” the joint CIA, FBI statement said.
The FBI alleged that Rush requested a “significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.”
The agency did not say what he wanted the money for, but some was found in a storage area near his office, the AP reported.
Officials searched his home on May 18 and seized more than 300 gold bars, $2 million in cash and 35 luxury watches.
The FBI affidavit said Rush “knowingly embezzled, stole, purloined, or knowingly converted a thing of value of the United States” for his personal use, the AP reported.
He is also accused of lying about his background for several years.
The FBI said Roush claimed to be a Navy pilot and that he graduated from Clemson University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He did serve in the Navy, enlisting in 1997 and serving as a reservist from 2004 to 2015. He was honorably discharged as a lieutenant. The filing stated he had no pilot evaluations while serving in the military. He also did not attend either university.
NBC News noted that the government conducts background investigations on every CIA employee and on other agencies that have access to sensitive and secret information before they are hired, and that their financial activities, travel, credit records, and other information continue to be monitored after their hiring to ensure they cannot be blackmailed.
Rush applied to work for the government three times. The first was in 2000 after he said he graduated from Clemson, the second after he said he graduated from Rensselaer and finally in 2009 when he included the degrees and an aircraft test from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. After the final application, he was hired. In applications filed for promotion, Rush claimed he was a thesis adviser at the Air Force Institute of Technology and a Navy pilot.
The Federal Aviation Administration said there is no record of Rush having a certificate or pilot’s license, NBC News reported.
Fox News reported that his actual job in the Navy was an information systems technician.
The FBI said Rush also illegally earned $77,000 in fraudulent military leave after he claimed 744 hours of paid time off, telling his bosses that he was serving as a Navy Reserve captain through last September, despite leaving the service a decade prior, according to Fox News.
It is not known what position Rush held with the CIA. He was called a “former senior executive service-level employee at a United States government agency” in the court filing, the AP reported.
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