– The Washington Times
A Virginia woman has pleaded guilty to wire fraud, admitting that she used the federal government’s lenient telework policies to claim paychecks for multiple jobs she was working simultaneously.
Nehemie Almonor, 41, would keep at least three laptops open at the same time to fool her employers into thinking she was online and working solely for them. That included the Transportation Security Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Food and Drug Administration, the Air Force Reserves and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as a private company.
She regularly submitted timecards totaling 120 hours for each 40-hour work week.
Her scam lasted three years, from May 2022 to April 2025.
Prosecutors said TSA received multiple complaints that Almonor wasn’t available during the hours she had submitted as working.
“Almonor also claimed full-time work while on military orders with the U.S Air Force at the same time she claimed full-time work for three other entities,” the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia said in announcing the charges.
Prosecutors are seeking to have her repay nearly $300,000 in ill-gotten wages.
She’s not the only fed to have been caught using relaxed telework policies to claim to work multiple jobs. Crissy Monique Baker was ordered last year to repay the government $255,866.99, but U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan spared her jail time after she was convicted of fraudulently claiming to work three federal jobs at the same time.
Baker claimed to have worked as many as 26 hours in a 24-hour period.
She insisted she didn’t actually shortchange the government because her “exceptional time management, concentration and organizational skills” allowed her to finish every task she was assigned.
Baker worked as a human resources contractor for AmeriCorps, a full-time analyst at HUD and a contractor for the National Institutes of Health.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
