Another Contractor Found Guilty of Falsifying SF-86

As a follow-on to a previous article in which a former Navy contractor was found guilty and sentenced to prison for lying on his background investigation application and to FBI agents, another similar case just finished in federal court involving a former State Department contractor. Zaldy Sabino was sentenced to seven years in prison for conspiracy, bribery, wire fraud and making false statements. It all started in 2015 when he filled out an SF-86 for a background reinvestigation. Here is summary of the case:

Sabino was a contracting officer for the State Department, held a Top Secret security clearance, and was responsible for awarding and monitoring construction contracts. He and the owner of a Turkish construction company conspired to award multi-million dollar contracts to construction company owner. In return, Sabino was given more than $1,500,000 in cash transactions over the course of five years. State Department investigators were already conducting inquiries and tracking the Turkish construction company owner. When they identified Sabino as a person of interest in the investigation they went back and looked at his Office of Government Ethics (OGE) 450 form to see what reportable income, assets, gifts, and arrangements he had listed over the past five years; there were none.

In 2015 he submitted an SF-86 for the required periodic reinvestigation and deliberately omitted information about his additional sources of income and lied to investigators during an interview. As usually is the case, had there not been other more serious charges and deliberately lies to investigators, the falsification on the SF-86 would not have been pursued. You can read the entire indictment here. The adjudicative guidelines for a security clearance denial are Personal Conduct, Finances- Affluence, Criminal Conduct, and Foreign Influence.