A former contract worker for Walter Reed Army Medical Center is expected to plead guilty in a case where she is accused of stealing more than $165,000 in travel expenses.
Ronnita Nicole Dunbar, of Bowie, was charged in U.S. District Court in Washington with theft of government property and faces up to 10 years in prison. Dunbar was charged by criminal information, which means a plea deal is in the works because the charge can’t be filed without the defendant’s consent.
According to charging documents filed in D.C.’s federal court, Dunbar was an administrative assistant in the department of surgery at Walter Reed, the military hospital in Washington that treats soldiers for brain injuries, lost limbs, and physical and psychological damage. From 2004 to 2008, Dunbar performed various secretarial duties, including using the Defense Travel System to make travel arrangements for doctors and residents within the department of surgery. She set up itineraries, booked airline flights and hotel reservations, recorded travel expenses and arranged for payments. Beginning in 2007, court documents said, Dunbar began fraudulently accessing the Defense Travel System for her own misdeeds. Using the user profiles of actual doctors and residents at Walter Reed, she is accused of creating fake travel plans. She changed the electronic money transfers from their accounts to an account in her name at the Pentagon Federal Credit Union and submitted false receipts to hide the theft, prosecutors said. Later on, Dunbar began creating fake user profiles and bogus travel authorizations, but again had the money wired to her own bank account, documents allege. In one case, Dunbar opened a prepaid credit card in the user’s name and paid for the charges on the government account. In each case, she spent the stolen money on herself, documents said. The theft was discovered after Dunbar left her job in 2008 and Pentagon accountants found a large number of open travel reservations within the department of surgery.
