Matthew Boyle has a nifty exposé at The Daily Caller of an allegedly corrupt bureaucrat that managed to direct $52 million in contracts to her husband and daughter.  Kathleen McGrade, a contract officer for State, sent that much in federal projects to Sterling Royale Group, run by CEO Jennifer Herring and VP Brian Collinsworth.  Collinsworth denies any personal relationship with McGrade or Herring, but his MySpace profile told a different story in 2007:

Collinsworth also denied that Herring is McGrade’s daughter, and his stepdaughter.

But wedding photographs and other personal pictures Collinsworth posted on MySpace.com suggest otherwise. TheDC has seen Collinsworth’s MySpace profile, last updated in early 2007, which declares that he is “happily married to my beautiful wife of one year, Kathy.”

“I have four children from a previous marriage and one brand new step-daughter (see photos),” Collinsworth adds in the profile. “At the moment, I’m working in the construction business doing Embassy work for the US Government.”

Boyle found Herring’s ex-fiancé and asked whether Collinsworth’s denial was valid, and that’s not all:

Smithey confirmed that Collinsworth is married to McGrade, and that Herring is McGrade’s daughter. Smithey was at the wedding. “I was one of their groomsmen,” he told TheDC.

Smithey added that McGrade and Collinsworth covered their tracks and kept their marriage concealed from the State Department and others. “It was a big secret,” Smithey said. “In fact, they even told me it was a secret and not to tell anyone that they know that they are married, because of the whole conflict of interest and all that.”

In addition to photos documenting their marriage and their allegedly improper professional relationship, TheDC has discovered that McGrade and Collinsworth appeared as co-owners on a 2010 real estate record for a house in Stafford, Va. McGrade also publicly lists a condominium residence in downtown Washington, D.C.

When TheDC visited that building, a security guard confirmed that Collinsworth lives with McGrade at that address.

McGrade doesn’t directly work for the State Department.  She herself is a contractor, employed through ATSG, which refused to speak to Boyle about the story.  The State Department, on the other hand, did respond to Boyle to tell him that the matter has been referred to the Inspector General.  The conflict of interest could result in criminal charges for McGrade, and presumably for Collinsworth and Herring too, if they participated in a conspiracy to defraud the government.  Denying the family relationship might be overt enough to qualify, if indeed the relationship can be established, which Boyle has done well to carefully establish.

The outcome of this story should be very interesting to watch.  This is good work by Boyle, who might have saved taxpayers a few million dollars down the road by exposing this corruption.  The big question will be how many more examples of this kind of corruption still exist, and I doubt that the answer is zero.