California DOC Whistleblower Promoted to Head of Audit/Compliance Department
California DOC Whistleblower Promoted to Head of Audit/Compliance Department
What goes around apparently comes around. In 2004, a 35-year veteran California civil servant received $500,000 in a whistleblower lawsuit against his employer, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), after facing retaliation for refusing to cover up over $29 million in wasted payments related to sick-leave and overtime abuse. Four years later, in June 2008, he was promoted to head the CDCR’s audits and compliance department.
Richard Krupp, 57, was officially reassigned and promoted to do what he perhaps does better than any of his peers – ferret out waste, fraud and abuse in the prison system. Once a prison guard, he rose to a managerial position with the CDCR’s personnel section. It was there that a routine audit identified $29 million in misspent funds.
Krupp was assigned by his supervisors to write a report whitewashing the audit findings. He refused. In fact, Krupp put his own pencil to the numbers and discovered the actual dollar figure was even higher. As his reward, he was removed from his post and consigned to a dead-end job reviewing student requests to interview prisoners, a retaliatory job assignment over which he successfully sued. [See: PLN, March 2005, p.1].
CDCR Undersecretary Stephen Kessler, in appointing Krupp to his new $96,800 a year position, said, “What better person to head audits and compliance than someone who has spent a lot of time raising issues that needed to get fixed and didn’t get anywhere.”
Moreover, Krupp no longer has to fear reprisals from seditious supervisors as he reports directly to Kessler. “Now, I can actually help solve some of the problems,” he said. “This is an opportunity to help rather than just point the finger.”
Source: Associated Press
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