26 People Arrested in Camp Humphreys Corruption Bust
This isn’t the first and likely not the last large corruption case to happen at Camp Humphreys:
More than two dozen South Koreans, including several employed by the U.S. military, were indicted on charges of employment fraud following a two-year investigation, South Korean police said Monday.
Twenty-six people, including 10 current and former U.S. Forces Korea employees, pocketed roughly $138,700 in exchange for preferential treatment of Korean job candidates between April 2018 and December 2020, the Daegu Metropolitan Police statement said.
USFK is the military command in charge of roughly 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula.
Two defendants, including an official with the USFK Labor Service Corps, were arrested according to police. The labor official and others are suspected of receiving between $23,800 and $31,700 from five job seekers in exchange for favorable reviews during their interviews.
The defendants allegedly created fake certifications required for employment. Police confiscated around $126,800 from the defendants prior to their arrest.
The investigation was launched after the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division obtained information about the bribes and relayed it to South Korean authorities. An Eighth Army spokesman declined to comment on whether the suspects were privy to sensitive military information.
“These arrests involved persons and activities that may be related to the Korean Service Corps and are currently the subject of a criminal investigation,” Army Lt. Col. Neil Penttila said in a statement Tuesday. “We will withhold further comment until the completion of that investigation.”
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
How much is a person’s integrity worth? Those arrested were too cheap and forgot to include 10 percent for the big guy.
Wow… 26 people pocketed 138K in two years… a whopping 2600 per person per year. How could they spend it all?
Who knew it was such a hotbed of high dollar criminal activity in those parts.
Now that criminals have been caught and crime has been solved, nothing more to see.
Ha… autocorrect changed my name. I like it.
Just another part of the sometimes rigged hiring process. (Wasting job seekers’ time when we all know the job is going to a recent retiree from the office or unit, or a spouse, relative, etc.) Some of the old-timers told me it used to be an accepted practice where people paid or gave gifts for getting a job on base.