Former Air National Guard Col. pleads guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud

Former Air National Guard Col. Gerard J. Mangis admitted that he was part of a conspiracy with a civilian contractor to defraud the Air Force while he was in a leadership position at the 171st Air Refueling Wing in Findlay, PA.

According to TRIB Live News, 60-year-old Mangis became friends with Robert St. Clair, 52, who worked in the National Guard Bureau’s logistics department at its Andrews Air Force Base headquarters in Maryland.  St. Clair ran had financial troubles that threatened his security clearance, so Mangis created a job for him that didn’t require him to do any work, though he was technically “enlisted” in the Air National Guard.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Melucci said that St. Clair “never appeared for a fitness test.  He never appeared for a re-enlistment ceremony,” St. Clair did show up at the base to play golf with Mangis, court documents state.

After Mangis created the fake job for him, St. Clair assigned “work days” to the 171st that Mangis used to get paid more money.  An Air Force audit performed in 2013 found that Mangis had been paid for 397 inactive duty days and 682 active duty days between 2006 and 2011. A person in his position would usually have been paid for 288 inactive days and 90 active days over the same period, Melucci said.

St. Clair pleaded guilty to conspiracy in April 2014 and will be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab in September.

Mangis pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy but confirmed he was responsible for over one hundred other counts of wire fraud, filing false claims and theft of government property. He came to an agreement with the government his sentence will be determined by the amount of money that the government lost because of his schemes.  This amount totals somewhere between $30,000 and $70,000.

He is currently free on a $10,000 bond.