A federal employee pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing nearly $194 million from a federal intelligence agency by creating two fake secret programs and then pumping taxpayers’ money into them.
David Rush had told his agency that one program required the purchase of luxury real estate in Florida, and he’d had an agent buy more than $100 million worth of properties, with $39 million more left in his account when authorities closed in.
He told superiors the other program needed gold bars. He acquired 298 of them, worth more than $46 million, which were delivered to Rush’s office in Loudoun County, Virginia.
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He also admitted to running up a travel budget of nearly $2 million in less than two years, to claiming military leave long after he left the Navy, and to disclosing secret information to a foreign government official.
He kept his nefarious activities hidden by using the cloak of secrecy that naturally surrounded his job. Authorities did not name the agency he was working for, but said it was the CIA that flushed him out.
Authorities tried to put the best face on the embarrassing situation, saying they were the ones who uncovered his activities.
“David Rush abused his position and betrayed the public trust and should be held fully accountable for his actions,” said CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
But prosecutors acknowledged the damage.
“The United States entrusted Davis Rush with the resources to protect our nation and its people, and for sheer avarice he chose to betray that trust for personal enrichment,” said Theophani K. Stamos, acting as U.S. attorney in eastern Virginia. “He robbed his country, not just of its treasury, but also of its faith.”
Rush, 49, held a senior-level position with top-secret/sensitive compartmented information security clearance.
He used that to create special access programs, which are above top secret and their existence is supposed to be known only to those specifically cleared for them.
Rush would then “read in” government contractors, telling them they’d been granted access to the fake programs while ordering them not to reveal its existence. He got them to provide the money. And he used “need to know” rules to shut down internal inquiries.
Authorities said he lied about his education and qualifications to get the post. That included claiming combat experience as a military pilot and bachelor’s and doctoral degrees that he didn’t earn.
FBI Special Agent Matthew Johnson told the judge Rush falsely claimed an undergraduate degree from Clemson University, which allowed him to be commissioned as an ensign in the Navy Reserves in 2004.
He would serve in the Navy until 2015, but continued to claim military leave from his civilian spy agency up through 2021. That bilked the government out of $77,000, the FBI agent said.
Rush also wrongly claimed master’s degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
He admitted to running up a $1,818,487 travel budget from Sept. 10, 2024, to May 14 using private charters to fly to and from Palm Beach in Florida. He claimed it was official business and the government paid for it, but he admitted in his plea deal there was no legitimate purpose.
One trip cost $95,000.
The FBI recovered the 298 gold bars when it raided his home in May, along with $2.1 million in cash and 30 watches, many of them Rolexes.
The big scams — the real estate and gold bars — lasted from last October through May.
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