Pantex Owes The Government $18 Million After Discovery

Pantex here in Amarillo has been in the news a little bit lately. Recently, they found themselves on the verge of workers striking as they tried to hammer out a new contract.

These workers wanted immediate, then gradual pay increases over the next five years, along with some other conditions to be met including things such as changes in shifts.

Well, the good news there is that they were able to come to an agreement on a new contract, so workers won't be striking and everything at Pantex operationally will remain as it is. Furthermore, workers won't have to figure out how to supplement their income during the strike.

That's now the news I come to you with however. It appears that long before the contract became a thing, some employees were giving themselves a pay raise unbeknownst to Pantex, and now they owe the government a whole lot of money because of it.

It turns out that some employees were padding their time cards for hours they didn't actually work, thus essentially giving them an increase of pay they hadn't earned. Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC said the theft happened back in February 2019, so not recently during these negotiations.

CNS was working on overhauling the payroll systems and implementing process efficiencies when they discovered it. It was no small amount that they found either.

Because of time card fraud, employees that were a part of it were immediately fired, and now Pantex owes the government a bit over $18 million to cover the losses incurred from the time card debacle.

The cooperation from CNS was noted by the government and taken into account when coming up with the settlement amount, which suggests the money lost could actually be more than $18 million.