Justice Department says USIS submitted 665,000 incomplete background checks

By Tom Hamburger and Debbi Wilgoren, Updated: Thursday, January 23, 12:17 PM E-mail the writers

 The Justice Department has filed a detailed complaint in a whistleblowers’ lawsuit it joined against a company that conducts security-background checks for nearly half of potential U.S. government hires, adding new detail to accusations that the firm knowingly conducted flawed investigations of individuals seeking security clearances.

The filing against Falls Church, Va.-based USIS includes information about alleged shortcuts the company took in reviewing security-clearance candidates and about a cavalier and joking approach taken by some USIS employees to submitting files to the government that had not undergone a full review.

 “Flushed everything like a dead goldfish,” one manager wrote in one of several e-mails cited in the court filing.

The filing accuses USIS of submitting incomplete background reviews in about 40 percent of the cases it handled — at least 665,000 cases — and, in the process, qualifying for nearly $12 million in performance bonuses.

“Beginning in at least March 2008 and continuing through at least September 2012, USIS management devised and executed a scheme to deliberately circumvent contractually required quality reviews of completed background investigations in order to increase the company’s revenues and profits,” the Justice Department said in the complaint, which was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Alabama.

The cases were incomplete because they had not undergone a promised “quality review,” the government said.

USIS said in a statement that the allegations did not fit the company’s record or approach.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-joins-lawsuit-against-usis-over-background-checks/2014/01/23/db16e244-8432-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html?hpid=z3