Take the Long Way Home

Mileage reimbursement, for the most part, is an interesting test of personal honesty. After all, not many overseers are interested in deciphering whether you took the scenic route to your destination. But one federal investigator appears to have taken that liberal approach too far, 42,388 miles to be exact. Robert Hackett, an investigator for the Federal Public Defender service in the Western District of Michigan, claimed that he had logged 76,807 miles in his 1998 Honda Accord as a government watchdog. But in a plea agreement filed today in D.C.'s federal court, Hackett admits that he only traveled 34,419 and instead pocketed $15,132 in false expenses. For those calculating (thanks, Mapquest) how many cross country trips between DC and, for instance, San Francisco (a route this reporter has taken three times) the number is roughly 15. And for the adventurous, that distance could have taken then from Washington to Anchorage, Alaska and back five times.