A former Department of Housing and Urban Development loan official who secured the job despite a criminal record and then stole $843,000 was sentenced to more than two years in federal prison Wednesday.
Brian E. Thompson was also ordered to pay restitution for orchestrating a lucrative scam, which Ron Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said unraveled after a tip to investigators from coworkers inside HUD’s Office of Native American Programs.
“Brian Thompson will be a federal inmate because of his crooked dealings,” Mr. Machen said in a statement after the sentencing in federal court in Washington. “He ripped off the taxpayer and harmed the integrity of a program designed to help underprivileged Native American homeowners.”
Thompson’s case also exposed weaknesses in HUD’s background check process. Sentencing papers in the case showed the loan specialist had an arrest record spanning decades that included larceny and theft charges, but HUD officials were at a loss to explain how they missed the arrests and convictions before hiring Thompson in 2011.
An attorney for Thompson said in court papers that the cases weren’t as serious as the prosecutors suggested, with two convictions stemming from an apparent dispute involving a construction contract.
Either way, a HUD spokesman acknowledged something went amiss during the vetting process.
“We are reviewing the portion of the Personal Identity Verification (PIV) process that HUD controls to understand why there were no background flags,” agency spokesman Jereon M. Brown wrote in an email last month. “Something should have definitely come up during the background check.”
• Jim McElhatton can be reached at jmcelhatton@washingtontimes.com.
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