Sailors used government credit to pay for gambling, prostitutes

WASHINGTON -- Navy personnel used government credit cards to hire prostitutes at brothels, buy jewelry, gamble and attend New York Yankees and Los Angeles Lakers games in fraudulent purchases exceeding $200,000, congressional investigators have found.

Lower-paid enlisted personnel earning between $12,000 and $27,000 were the biggest abusers but the Navy itself bears responsibility for failure to monitor the travel card program, the General Accounting Office concluded.

The GAO report was prepared for a House hearing on Tuesday and obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

The study shows the abuses continued many months after the investigators first publicly reported on problems with the travel cards. From October 2000 through March 2002, the new survey found 1,180 Navy transactions for personal items totaling $206,700.

The Pentagon has stepped up its efforts to control use of the cards. Some 400,000 inactive accounts that were unused during the previous year have been canceled. Those who abused the cards have had money involuntarily deducted from their paychecks.

Officials who grant security clearances now are notified when a card holder comes under investigation. And the military has promised to step up civil and criminal prosecutions.

Last summer, the GAO found that some 200 Army personnel had used the cards to get $38,000 in cash that they spent on lap dances and other forms of entertainment at strip clubs near military bases.

The new Navy study found additional use of the cards to obtain cash at adult clubs -- money normally used to tip dancers, waitresses and bartenders.

"Once again the bottom line is the same: no controls, extensive abuse and no accountability," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, one of the recipients of the GAO study along with Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif.