A former federal employee pleaded guilty to receiving unlawful payment for work he was supposed to provide the public as part of his taxpayer-funded job, according to the United States Attorney’s Office of Maryland.
National Archives Records Administration. By Wangkun Jia. Shutterstock.
Gerald F. Luchansky, 82, of Annapolis, Maryland was employed at the National Archives Records Administration for nearly three decades and received a lifetime achievement award for his work, according to the United States Attorney’s Office of Maryland. Part of his job was to “pull archival aerial photographs of Allied bombing runs in World War II, digitize them, and make them available to researchers,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Maryland.
A German company paid Luchansky to do the same work, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Maryland, and provide the materials on thumb drives or CDs.
“Luchansky would scan NARA’s archival aerial photographs and provide them to the German company on thumb drives or CDs,” according to prosecutors. “The Germany company paid Luchansky for the photographs, even though Luchansky was being paid by NARA to provide those same photographs to members of the public for free.” (RELATED: National Archives Finds Original Copy Of Juneteenth Order)
Another company based in Maryland paid him to research NARA cartographic holdings and get rolls of NARA’s aerial film, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Maryland, when he was supposed to provide this information to the public for free.
Luchansky was sentenced to four months of house arrest and will have to pay a $5,000 fine as part of his year of probation, according to the United States Attorney’s Office of Maryland.