A former TSA agent at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport pleaded guilty to stealing government funds after he faked having abdominal cancer and then took $60,000 in donated leave pay from sympathetic TSA coworkers.
From September 2009 to 2014, Marc Bess, who authorities said has never been diagnosed with or treated for cancer, received about 2,240 hours of donated leave. Government officials said that works out to about $60,000 in salary and benefits. At eight hours a day and 40 hours a week, the 42-year-old Atlantan drew more than a year’s worth of leave pay.
“Bess deceived his coworkers who donated their own paid vacation time out of concern for their colleague so he could take time off from work at the public’s expense,” said acting U.S. attorney John Horn.
The Transportation Security Administration offers a voluntary leave transfer program to its employees, which permits them to donate their paid leave hours to coworkers in cases of emergency, authorities said. To be eligible for the leave pay, employees must describe in writing the nature and severity of their medical problem and have the written support of their doctor.
Over the five-year period, Bess submitted three written applications to the TSA falsely claiming that he was receiving treatment for lymphoma cancer in the abdominal area, the government said. He then forged the signature of a physician in his supporting letters which described the radiation therapy and surgical treatments he claimed to need.
Bess was deemed eligible to receive donated leave hours from his coworkers based on the applications.
Then, authorities said, Bess “…made the mistake of faking a doctor’s note from a physician who had died months earlier.”
Bess periodically submitted forged doctor’s notes describing faked cancer treatments in support of his requests for more paid leave hours. But two of the forged letters he submitted were dated several months after the doctor who purportedly signed them died in July 2014.
Bess resigned from the TSA in January 2015 after his fraud was exposed. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court and is scheduled for sentencing on July 24.
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