Remember our old embezzler friend at the White House, Felipe Sixto?

[magbana]

He is supposed to be sentenced today.

"Monday, March 16, 2009 2:56 PM
Former Bush Aide Embezzled $579K

A former aide to then-President George W. Bush used money he stole from a government-funded nonprofit to pay student loans and credit card debt and to purchase a car, a truck, a piano and artwork, according to documents filed this month at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Felipe E. Sixto, 29, who was an associate director at the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, also spent $50,000 on groceries and restaurants, paid $142,000 to family members, and used $82,000 for a mortgage payment and another $19,000 for medical bills, the documents show. The detailed spending was listed in a 26-page memorandum seeking leniency filed by Kathleen E. Voelker, a Washington lawyer representing Sixto. She said that Sixto had made restitution to the Center for a Free Cuba, or CFC, a nonprofit that promotes democracy in Cuba.

In December, Sixto pleaded guilty to stealing $579,247 in U.S. Agency for International Development funds from the CFC. He is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday. Prosecutors, in a court filing, said that Sixto engaged in the theft while serving as CFC's chief of staff and continued carrying out his scheme after he joined the White House in July 2007. As part of his scheme, the government said, Sixto set up a bank account, incorporated a company in Maryland, and used the alias, "Walter Lee.''

Sixto, the government said, used the stolen funds "to live a lifestyle that was beyond his means.'' His conduct, prosecutors said, "had a tremendous and lasting impact on CFC.'' Shortly after CFC reported the loss of money to AID, the nonprofit's government funding was suspended. Some CFC employees were forced to work without pay while others were terminated, the government said. AID reinstated the nonprofit, which has filed a new application for funding.

--Edward T. Pound"
http://undertheinfluence.nationaljournal.com/2009/03/former-bush-aide-embezzled-579.php

[Judi Lynn]

1. Oh, I hope they'll be gentle with him. No doubt you can count on it!

It was, after all, just his young "exile" sense of entitlement which made him do it.

Does this remind you of another story? I'm sure reminded:

Dissidents Blew American 'aid' Millions on Luxuries for Cuba

Cuban dissidents who were given millions of dollars by the US government to support democracy in their homeland instead blew money on computer games, cashmere sweaters, crabmeat and chocolates, which were then sent to the island.

A scathing congressional audit of democracy assistance programmes found "questionable expenditure" by several groups funded by Washington in opposition to President Fidel Castro's rule on the communist Caribbean island.

The Miami-based Acción Democrática Cubana spent money on a chainsaw, Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations, mountain bikes, leather coats and Godiva chocolates, which the group says were all sent to Cuba. "These people are going hungry. They never get any chocolate there," Juan Carlos Acosta, the group's executive director, told the Miami Herald.

He also defended the purchase of a chainsaw he said he needed to cut a tree that had blocked access to his office in a hurricane, and said the leather jackets and cashmere sweaters were bought in a sale. "They think it's not cold there," Mr Acosta said. "At $30 <£16> it's a bargain because cashmere is expensive. They were asking for sweaters."

The audit analysed $65m of spending by the US Agency for International Development (USAid) from 1996 to 2005 and concluded that poor management was to blame for the waste. "There were weaknesses in agency policies and in programme office oversight, and internal control deficiencies," the report states.

None of the 36 groups that received money were identified in the report, but others admitted to the Miami Herald in advance of its publication on Wednesday that they had been investigated.

Frank Hernández-Trujillo, executive director of Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group for the Support of Democracy), said his organisation received more than $7m from USAid, a programme that has been a central part of President George Bush's policy on Cuba.

"I'll defend that until I die," Mr Hernández-Trujillo said of his decision to spend part of his group's allocation on boxes of computer games. "That's part of our job, to show the people in Cuba what they could attain if they were not under that system."

Most of the items were distributed to dissidents in Cuba by US diplomats in Havana, who were sometimes unaware what was in the shipments. The US government, however, has previously accused the Cuban government of hijacking consignments sent to its mission.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/116333.html