US Military Personnel Have Been Convicted of $50 Million Worth of Crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan
That's not counting all the ones they don't catch and convict.
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/05/06/us-military-personnel-have-been-convicted-of-50-million-worth-of-crimes-in-iraq-and-afghanistan/
Military fuel in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a perennial target of theft during the past 14 years of war. In Afghanistan, fuel moved around the country in “jingle trucks,” tankers adorned with kaleidoscopic patterns and metal ornaments. At Fenty, for example, jingle trucks bearing fuel arrived every few days from suppliers in Pakistan, all driven by locals under contracts with the base. Officers at Fenty then distributed it to 32 nearby bases, with the largest ones using up to 2 million gallons of fuel a week.
To describe the system as loosely controlled might be an understatement: Standard contracts allowed each driver to take seven days to bring the fuel to a destination that might be only a few hours away, according to Army Maj. Jonathan McDougal, who oversaw motor vehicle logistics in northeast Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 from Bagram Airfield. “It was like they planned for something to go wrong with every convoy,” McDougal told the Center.
Fuel pilferage was the “leading cause” of failed deliveries, according to McDougal. One out of every three truck convoys would lose, on average, about 11,000 gallons of fuel, amounting to more than 800,000 gallons of lost fuel during his 12 months in the country. Military vehicles would sometimes accompany the jingle truck drivers, but if the trucks carrying the fuel left the foreign troops’ designated safe routes — to get lunch in a nearby village, for example — the military escorts would just “have to let them go,” he said.
Charboneau’s role in the Fenty fuel theft ring was simple. She ordered trucks to transport more fuel than needed, then filed fake records showing the extra fuel had been delivered to a base. After leaving Fenty in a convoy, the extra trucks diverted their loads to prearranged meeting spots, where buyers offloaded the fuel and paid in cash, with the proceeds divided later among Charboneau and her co-conspirators. The scheme worked – for a while – because the fuel storage amounts and truck delivery amounts matched (although of course the bases’ records of delivered fuel did not).
This represented, Charboneau said, “a big gap” in the fuel oversight system. And the rewards were enticing — around $5,000 in net profit from a single extra truckload.