Halloween is over, but apparently federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security take their tricks and treats year-round.
Whistleblowers said workers have long been enjoying the "candy bowl," a pot of overtime pay that boosts their salaries even if they don't work the hours, The Washington Post reported.
Overtime money, which federal employees reportedly use to pad their paychecks 25 percent, is actually used as a selling point while recruiting new workers, according to accounts from seven whistleblowers at six DHS offices.
The federal Office of Special Counsel, an investigative and prosecutorial agency, detailed the practice in a report submitted to the White House and Congress on Thursday.
The OSC called it a "profound and entrenched problem" at DHS and a "gross waste of government funds."
The report concluded the pay, which is allocated for Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime, amounts to $8.7 million a year.
Some federal workers routinely claim their scheduled eight hours along with two hours of overtime every day, said whistleblower Jose Rafael Ducos Bello, a former supervisor for Customs and Border Protection.
The overtime is intended to compensate for unanticipated extra work, but federal employees are instead taking pay for time spent at their desks, Carolyn Lerner, special counsel at the OSC, said in an interview with The Washington Post.
"These are not border patrol guys chasing bad guys who can't stop what they are doing and fill out paperwork for overtime," Lerner said. "We are not questioning that. These are employees sitting at their desks, collecting overtime because it's become a culturally acceptable practice."
A department-wide review of how the overtime is used has been ordered, said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard.
"While many frontline officers and agents across the department require work hour flexibility, often through the use of Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime, misuse of these funds is not tolerated," he said.
No other departments have been reported to the OSC for abusing overtime funds.
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