Former Department of Defense Employees are Sentenced for Defrauding the United States

WASHINGTON – Two former civilian employees of the Department of Defense (DOD) were sentenced in El Paso, Tex., for defrauding the United States of tens of thousands of dollars, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.

Lilia Delgadillo, 34, of El Paso, who pleaded guilty on Nov. 2, 2007 to one count of wire fraud, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge David Briones in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, to 33 months in prison followed by probation with 100 hours of community service.

Delgadillo was employed by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), a component of DOD, and stationed at Ft. Bliss, Tx. Delgadillo admitted that from January through March 2007, she and a coworker, Saul Granados, 26, devised a scheme to defraud the United States of up to $700,000 through the misuse of a DOD pay-processing computer system. Both Granados and Delgadillo improperly accessed the system and submitted fraudulent pay adjustments which resulted in wire transmissions from DFAS headquarters in Indiana to Delgadillo’s bank account in Texas. Delgadillo also admitted that she coded the transactions to make it appear as though the payments were being made to a former member of the Arizona National Guard, when in fact they were deposited into Delgadillo’s account.

Granados, of El Paso, Tex., who pleaded guilty on September 14, 2007 to one count of wire fraud involving the same scheme, was also sentenced today by U.S. District Judge David Briones of the Western District of Texas, to three years probation and 150 hours of community service.

These cases are being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys John P. Pearson and Michael Ferrara of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section, which is headed by Section Chief William M. Welch II. These cases are being investigated by a task force of agents from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. The prosecution has received substantial assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas and the U.S. Army Audit Agency.