During its short lifetime, the DHS’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) acquired a well-earned reputation for hiring petty thieves to inspect baggage at airports (see “TSA: Thieves, Spendthrifts, Authoritarians” in our November 15, 2004 issue).

Now we learn that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has been placed under Homeland Security’s umbrella, has hired recidivist criminals to work as disaster-relief inspectors. “Government inspectors entrusted to enter disaster victims’ homes and verify damage claims include criminals with records for embezzlement, drug dealing and robbery,” reported the Miami Sun-Sentinel on April 24.

According to Dan Craig, director of recovery programs for FEMA, “Our contract inspectors are our first line of accountability.” In hiring inspectors from one of three Washington-area firms, FEMA is required by law to subject applicants to a rigorous background check. Yet the Sun-Sentinel — in an investigation it conducted despite a complete lack of cooperation from the agency — “found 30 inspectors or managers with criminal records out of 133 it was able to identify.... 17 had criminal histories at the time they were hired. At least four lost their jobs for arrests after they were hired, including one scheduled for sentencing May 6 in California for child molestation, and two convicted of federal bribery charges for promising higher FEMA payments in exchange for money.”

Inspector Jerry Koontz was fired after stalking a Pensacola aid applicant. “All I was doing was trying to help the poor girl,” he insists. Veteran FEMA inspector Bill Neal is a recidivist criminal. His rap sheet includes embezzlement, criminal sexual misconduct, wire fraud involving land owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management, and two prison terms — before he was hired as a FEMA inspector in 1993. In 1999, after performing 6,000 FEMA inspections, he went to prison again on drug-related charges — yet the agency hired him immediately after his release in 2001.

Inspector Mark S. Verheyden was convicted in 1994 of soliciting a kickback from a federal aid applicant in Houston. Prior to that conviction he had served 10 years’ probation for kidnapping and aggravated assault with a weapon for an incident in which he used a “construction-type nail gun” to abduct a former girlfriend. His vita also includes convictions for battery.