archive.fo/6g7kU - GAO source
archive.fo/CMbLa - other GAO source
archive.fo/JDh90 - Ars Technica report
archive.fo/84BPx - website that ships free weapons/military equipment
From the U.S. Government Accountability Office
Transcript for: An Investigation into DOD's Transfers of Excess Equipment
Released: July 2017
>[ Zina Merritt ] We have law enforcement agencies who can be potential recipients of DOD excess property like militarized property, such as rifles and simulated pipe bombs and other things that have been used for training purposes that DOD no longer needs. Essentially, they are able to apply and if they're approved, they're given a unique code in which they're allowed to go online, view the items, and "bid" on them. If they win the items, what they do is they're allowed to actually go to the warehouses where they're located, and pick up the items either physically or they can have the items shipped to them. However, all the items are free; the only cost that they may incur is with transportation costs if they actually have them shipped to them.
>[ Wayne McElrath ] The way that we tested the controls relative to this program is that we established a fake law enforcement organization as Zina indicated, we then submitted our application and bidded on those items.
>[ Wayne McElrath ] Well, we actually had access to the full range of excess surplus military items that were available but we chose or bid on training rifles, simulated pipe bombs, scopes, night vision goggles, things that weren't exactly legal.
>[ Wayne McElrath ] We were able to obtain approximately 100 items that totaled a value of approximately 1.2 million.
>[ Zina Merritt ] The biggest problem is that DLA's internal control processes for this program were really broken. We found, for example, that when we applied for the program as a fake organization, no one ever even called us to verify information. They didn't attempt to come out to the location to visit us. Secondly, when the investigators went to the location, they were actually able to get the items without presenting the proper identification. Third, they were able to get a quantity of items that wasn't consistent with what we bid for, actually we got more items. And fourth, we found that they just don't have a framework in order to do fraud mitigation at all stages of the program. Essentially, that puts any organization at risk of this happening again.