Former BIA employees sentenced in scam

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BILLINGS (AP) -- The last of seven people who admitted swindling the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service in a bribery and kickbacks scheme on the Crow Reservation is following the others to federal prison.

Charles Dillon, a former supervisor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, told U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull he had been under stress.

''I made a foolish decision. I'm sorry for my actions," Dillon said Tuesday before he was sentenced.

''You were in this situation for money, and you were getting as much as you could," Cebull told Dillon.

Dillon, 36, of Crow Agency, took bribes from the scheme's mastermind, Kirm Kath, 41, of Gering, Neb., Cebull said. Dillon was the supervisor of BIA's Facilities Management Branch at Crow Agency from April 1997 until his dismissal in December 2001.

The scheme involved using government-issued credit cards to buy overpriced merchandise, mostly light bulbs and lighting equipment, in quantities far exceeding the government's needs. Some goods never arrived.

The loss to the government and the bribes Dillon accepted totaled $132,491, Cebull said.

Dillon pleaded guilty in February to three counts of bribery, two counts of mail fraud and one count of false statements.

The judge sentenced him to one year and nine months in prison and ordered approximately $72,000 in restitution. He gave Dillon the minimum under the sentencing guidelines, taking Dillon's lack of a criminal record into account.

Kath, as a traveling salesman, sold a total of $313,037 in lighting equipment to BIA and Indian Health Service workers. Investigators said he earned more than $150,000 in commissions and paid federal workers on the Crow Indian Reservation more than $30,000 in kickbacks.

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