Jacqueline Rivers, 45 of Morristown, Pa, pleaded guilty Jan. 12, to making false statements in connection with falsifying reports of working overtime for the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC).
The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Greg Scovel, Director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
According to Rivers’s plea agreement, Rivers was a mechanical engineer employed as a civilian by the NSWC, Carderock Division in Maryland, working out of the Office of Naval Research in Virginia. Almost every pay period, she advised her official timekeeper in Maryland that she had worked overtime hours – often 30 or more hours – and received overtime time pay. Her on-site supervisor in Virginia never authorized any overtime hours and never knew Rivers to work any overtime hours. During most of 2006 and 2007, Rivers’s on-site supervisor signed time sheets for Rivers for 80 regular hours per two-week pay period. Rivers then altered the signed time sheets and sent them to her timekeeper in Maryland. During some of the pay periods, Rivers reported that she worked overtime on days she was actually on annual or sick leave.
Between January, 2006 and September, 2007, Rivers’s false overtime reports resulted in the United States Navy paying Rivers between $30,000 and $70,000 of overtime payments.
Rivers faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte scheduled sentencing for March 31, 2010 at 9:30 a.m.