WASHINGTON – A senior federal official who convinced his bosses he needed months off to work as a CIA agent was sentenced to 32 months in prison on Wednesday.
John C. Beale, who was the highest paid official of the Environmental Protection Agency and a leading authority on climate change, said he was ashamed of his double life.
“Why did I do this? Greed – simple greed – and I’m ashamed of that greed,” he told federal Judge Ellen Huvelle.
He added that he may have carried out his 12-year deception because it gave him a “sense of excitement” and a “rush.”
“It was something like an addiction,” he said in court in his first public comments on his case.
Beale has already paid back nearly $900,000 in wages the was improperly paid and still owes another $500,000 for expenses he improperly collected.
“I’ve had better days,” Beale, 65, told The Post after sentencing. “It could have been much worse.”
Beale faced up to 37 months in prison. Huvelle declined to fine him additionally, saying “he is paying a hefty amount in every which way.”
Prosecutors said that beginning in 2000 Beale told his superiors he needed to take a day off each week because of his work for the CIA. But they didn’t learn until early this year that he had never worked for the spy agency.
He didn’t show up for six months in 2008, and eventually conned the EPA out of 2 ½ years of salary for work he never performed.
In court on Wednesday Beale also cleared up a mystery – what was he doing when he wasn’t at his EPA desk?
“I spent time exercising. I spent a lot of time working on my house,” he said.
Prosecutor James Smith told the court that Beale’s “lies have turned him into a poster child for what is wrong with the federal government.”
Beale was not accompanied by family members to court Wednesday. He requested to go to the Otisville, NY federal prison or another facility within two hours of New York City because his wife Mary has moved to Manhattan.
Investigators uncovered Beale’s double life as well as financial irregularities at the EPA.
For example, he was given a 25 percent retention bonus that boosted his salary to $206,000 a year – and was still being paid more than a year after he retired.
In addition, Beale lived lavishly at the taxpayers’ expense. He booked first class tickets on 70 percent of 33 flights — and billed the feds for six business trips to Los Angeles when he was visiting relatives in Bakersfield 120 miles away.