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Sentencing July 25 in Guard test bribery

A federal employee will be sentenced July 25 for accepting bribes to falsify Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test results for applicants to the Army National Guard.

Christine P. Thomas will be sentenced under a plea agreement in U.S. District Court in Tucson, Ariz., for conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official.

Thomas was a test examiner for the Office of Personnel Management when, between September 2000 and February 2002, she received a total of about $1,500 in cash for boosting ASVAB scores for about 70 applicants, according to court documents. The documents also state that Thomas conspired with Guard recruiters when determining which test scores to manipulate.

ASVAB scores are used to determine whether an applicant qualifies to join the military and what military specialty or job he can do.

The maximum penalty for the charge against Thomas is five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and three years’ probation. Part of her plea agreement has Thomas waiving her right against self-incrimination and cooperating with prosecutors.

In or about September 2000, Thomas told an Arizona Guard recruiter that she had falsified ASVAB scores in the past, according to court documents. She then offered to manipulate test results for applicants identified by that recruiter and certain other Arizona Guard recruiters, the documents said.

FBI spokeswoman Deborah McCarley told The Associated Press that some of the payoffs Thomas received were between her and the recruiters, and some applicants “may or may not have known” that their scores were falsified.

Thomas was not able to provide the FBI with the names of those whose tests were fixed. The FBI asked the recruiters, but they were “uncooperative,” McCarley said, according to an AP report.

The Guard applicants involved in cheating will not face any consequences. Because the Guard doesn’t know their names, there’s no way of knowing which of the soldiers are still in the military, Maj. Paul Aguirre, a spokesman for the Arizona Guard, told AP.

The case against Thomas is linked to a widespread drug-running, bribery and extortion sting run by the FBI, the AP reported.

More than 60 people, including former active Army and National Guard soldiers and former police and corrections officers, have been netted in the operation, dubbed Operation Lively Green. The sting operated from January 2002 to March 2004, and it also resulted in a sting in Oklahoma that nabbed at least seven current and former soldiers.

The Tucson FBI office received several tips in 2001 that military test scores were being rigged, according to AP. When an undercover FBI informant met a Guard recruiter in a Tucson parking lot to pay for a rigged test, the recruiter opened the trunk of his government vehicle and also tried to sell the informant part of a kilogram of cocaine, the AP reported. That led to the creation of a fake cocaine ring the FBI used to see how many other military personnel and public officials would be willing to take part in drug running for money.