FBI Arrests CIA Official With $40 Million In Gold Bars In His Home (nytimes.com) 106
A senior CIA official, David Rush, was arrested after investigators found more than $40 million in gold bars and about $2 million in cash at his Virginia home. According to the New York Times, "The only charge lodged against David Rush is that he inflated his academic credentials and obtained military leave pay worth tens of thousands of dollars." From the report: The court papers describe Mr. Rush as a "former senior executive service-level employee at a United States government agency." People familiar with the investigation say he until very recently held a senior position at the C.I.A. In a joint statement, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. said the arrest occurred on May 19, after the agency alerted the bureau. "After a C.I.A. internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the F.B.I. for a law enforcement investigation," the statement said.
From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, "a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses." When the C.I.A. conducted a review of where the gold and currency were stashed, the agency was "unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency," according to court papers.
On May 18, F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Rush's home and found "approximately 303 gold bars, each of which weighed approximately one kilogram," according to an affidavit. Based on the price of gold, the affidavit said, the estimated value of the gold exceeded $40 million. Investigators also seized nearly three dozen luxury watches, many of them Rolexes. The court papers do not indicate why Mr. Rush appears to have kept so much gold, and $2 million in U.S. currency, in his home, or what work project would have required him to amass such wealth.
From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, "a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses." When the C.I.A. conducted a review of where the gold and currency were stashed, the agency was "unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency," according to court papers.
On May 18, F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Rush's home and found "approximately 303 gold bars, each of which weighed approximately one kilogram," according to an affidavit. Based on the price of gold, the affidavit said, the estimated value of the gold exceeded $40 million. Investigators also seized nearly three dozen luxury watches, many of them Rolexes. The court papers do not indicate why Mr. Rush appears to have kept so much gold, and $2 million in U.S. currency, in his home, or what work project would have required him to amass such wealth.
Why was original post modded ??? (Score:3)
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This raises a very important question. If the CIA are taking shortcuts and making assumptions about anything, we should not be making assumptions ourselves that the CIA aren't doing the same elsewhere. I am, however, still waiting for biolabs and WMDs to turn up in Iraq - something for which they appear to have ALSO taken one person's unsupported word for. They also ratted out their own officers in retaliation for questioning the existence of "yellowcake" (that turned out not to exist).
I'd be wary of claimi
Re: Why was original post modded ??? (Score:2)
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It's for "import".
The C is for cocaine [counterpunch.org].
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Bah, they were always like that. I in CIA is for incompentence.
There needs to be a word for "the fear of making a typo while insulting someone online." There probably already is one in German.
Re: Why was original post modded ??? (Score:2)
Maybe they meant incontinence?
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These are strategic typos to pretend that I'm not an LLM.
Re:Why was original post modded ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't just taking shortcuts though this wholesale negligence.
Once in a while you hear such and such President/CEO of ACME never really graduated from Some Small University. They lied to get past the HR gate got hired as manager or director of Widget production 15 years ago where they were not an officer not responsible for signature on public records etc, later got promoted and nobody went back and checked up on stuff.
This though, the claims this guy made were shall we say rather remarkable for such a short career, service in multiple military branches, a graduate degree, pilot, managing a lot of people, etc.. A bunch of things that should have said to anyone reading the resume, this sounds perhaps a little puffed up, maybe I should check on SOME of this stuff which should have produced a few easily obtained artifacts. Obviously zero effort was made to verify any of it. Clearly nobody did any DD here not the hiring manager, not OMB..
I can't say I have run down every line on every CV of everyone I have hired but I usually at least go, ok says he was such and such at XYZ corp, lets look their about-us page on wayback machine, ok there is a picture of him a title that is near enough...so that checks.. oh he is a licensed PI, ok I can check the states website for that.. Then you just consider the claims, like ok says he graduated in 2000 and in 2003 was president of XYZ corp, again you check out XYZ oh fine it looks like they have about 4 employees and rented office in suburban Cincinnati; whatever, on the other hand if it is a 4000+ people and they have a XYZ Parkway named after them, you pick the phone and check that out.
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Creators of the business and/or people whom have worked their way up still exist out there. Its just that we have fewer small businesses than mega corps run by oligarchs
That being said, lying about it to get a job is a red flag.
A long, sometimes boring, bureaucratic process (Score:2)
Graduating a college is not an indicator of successful business leaders.
It demonstrates the ability to complete a long, sometimes boring, bureaucratic process with some competence. So it was a screening tool for management trainees for many decades. On the job learning and performance took over at that point.
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He wasn't hired to flip fucking pizzas. (Score:2)
This though, the claims this guy made were shall we say rather remarkable for such a short career, service in multiple military branches, a graduate degree, pilot, managing a lot of people, etc.. A bunch of things that should have said to anyone reading the resume, this sounds perhaps a little puffed up, maybe I should check on SOME of this stuff which should have produced a few easily obtained artifacts. Obviously zero effort was made to verify any of it. Clearly nobody did any DD here not the hiring manager, not OMB..
Due diligence with the hiring manager? How about the fact that a senior CIA official was almost guaranteed to be holding a government security clearance?
It wasn't just "some" of those artifacts that should have been discovered. Fucking ALL of them should have been found with even a rudimentary check before granting him access to classified information. The FUCK happened with THAT screening repeated often over an entire career?
Keep in mind some years ago US Gov went to a continuous monitoring mode with r
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For some government agencies the ability to get away with fabricated backgrounds is a mandatory qualification. Somebody knew and decided they were cool with this.
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We probably would do well to shake the conception that Intelligence agencies are all-seeing/all-knowing fountains of competence. In reality they are filled with paranoid people of various levels of competence with a whole range of dispositions, including occasionally criminal.Intelligence agencies need to be a little criminal at times to get the job done. The idea that one of them might have been doing shady shit, in an agency that specializes in shady shit shouldn't surprise anyone. Hell, it was probably w
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https://www.npr.org/2026/05/28... [npr.org]
"In his application to enter the Senior Executive Service level ranks that RUSHsubmitted to his former U.S. Government employer on October 25, 2018, RUSH stated he was agraduate of the United States Air Force Test Pilot School, and he was the current Director of Testfor a 145-person, 18-aircraft joint Army/Navy weapons test organization, despite his militaryrecords, discussed above, indicating that he separated from the Navy in 2015. In this sameapplication, RUSH stated he h
Re: Gold bars you say? (Score:2)
Just the headline seems like a hilarious situation.
But why keep evidence of embezzlement at home?
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But why keep evidence of embezzlement at home?
Yeah, I think they forgot to include "stupid" in the long list of his faults.
Re: Gold bars you say? (Score:5, Interesting)
the answer to that one is actually kind of obvious, IMHO where do put large number of gold bars that does not result in people asking a lot of questions?
Safety deposit boxes? - I guess if spread it around enough separate banks, you have some privacy accessing the box (usually) but you still are not the only one handling it, gold is very very put much of it a given box and it might raise questions. One nosy bank manager might become a real problem quickly.
Bury it in the woods? - That works unless someone finds it, how undisturbed can make the local landscape appear? Did anyone say a local sheriff, game warden, etc get curious about that pickup beside the road?
Even transport carries a lot of risk, - what if you get pulled over, and an over zealous officer decides to search the car? Sure legally you might be able to get the discovery excluded from evidence but you're not getting the gold back..
Given it someone else? - Who do you that both won't ask questions, is dishonest enough to help you do something they reasonably can guess isn't on the up and up, and also trusty worthy enough to not help themselves?
40 million in gold without some documentation as to why you have it is rather a problem. Even you hammered it into look alikes of 17th century Spanish coins and claimed you found it diving off the Florida keys, a whole lot of entities are going to show up asking questions and asserting it should be theirs, just look what Mel Fisher went thru!
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he could get pointers from that NJ senator that took gold bars as bribes ...
The one in prison? Maybe not a good advisor.
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He wasn't that stupid but greed got the best of him. He already had way more than enough to disappear somewhere under a new identity.
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But why keep evidence of embezzlement at home?
I dearly hope the gold was hidden in the now traditional freezer.
But you do got to wonder. If I had $40 million, I'd be so retired to a tropical island without an extradition treaty. I just looked at a list [rednoticelawyers.com] and it's pretty slim pickings. The biggest problem is you're stuck in whatever country you pick. There's no way you're travelling internationally, at least, not without a good fake identity.
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If you're willing to settle for only $30 million, that should be enough to obtain a birth certificate and proof of residency in some remote village.
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But you do got to wonder. If I had $40 million, I'd be so retired to a tropical island without an extradition treaty.
If I stole $40M from the CIA, I'd be worried about a lot more than extradition.
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But why keep evidence of embezzlement at home?
While it has a very very strong smell of embezzlement, this line from TFS has me wondering:
"The only charge lodged against David Rush is that he inflated his academic credentials and obtained military leave pay worth tens of thousands of dollars."
Are the watches, gold, and money actually legitimately his and simply outlandish?
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The US government has a few people who do some things that require large quantities of gold bars of blind provenance, indicators of affluence and no accountability. They go to places that don't take US government checks or credit cards. When you have an administrative turnover at war with everything predecessor, some of these people get cashed out.
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If so, that sounds like the gold was obtained legitimately as part of their job, and the only real charge is the faked creds and military leave pay. That is in line with my suspicion that the mentions of gold, watches, and money are just to make it look worse than it was; That those, as ridiculous as they sound, were part of normal day to day CIA shit. That's a very different outlook than the way it seems to paint this - as if someone embezzled $40mil of gold bar and other such commodities while at a high l
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Don got a gold bar in his knickers after hearing that.
Pardon. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't know why this is marked troll. Pardons are clearly set at $1 million. https://thehill.com/homenews/a... [thehill.com]
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Pardons were $1million in 2001. I can't believe Trump would make such a bad deal!
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With all due respect to mjwx, I would have been inclined to mark it -1 Implausible. Wait, that doesn't exist. Okay then, +1 Funny.
None of the $40 million is David Rush's to give to anyone. [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Pardon. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then it clearly hasn't worked.
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I plead Poe's Law on this post.
But to the facts: his political affiliation is not clear. There are those who are trying to tie this to the Democrats by pointing out the time-line. [hindustantimes.com] The thefts allegedly began in 2009, during the first Obama administration.
On the other hand, it appears the overwhelming majority of the theft (the tens of millions of dollars) occurred between November 2025 and March 2026. [abc7news.com]
Whatever administration this guy served under (and he served under administrations run by both parties) the a
Ordering $40 million in gold bars on expences :o (Score:2)
Re: Ordering $40 million in gold bars on expences (Score:2)
Had to gas up the team's Hummer.
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I guess that is what gets most fraudsters in the end. Seems like the guy made a career out of false claims and progressively bolder lies. Probably started to believe he could away with anything.
Re:Ordering $40 million in gold bars on expences : (Score:4, Insightful)
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He told his Ferengi superior that he could keep the latinum.
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Ordering $40 million in gold bars on work related expenses [indiatimes.com] must have raised flags /s
I can only imagine: "Hey boss, I need to buy some new server racks. The vendor only accepts gold ingots."
Snark aside, it was probably more of the form "Hey boss, I need to bribe some third world dictator with a funny hat so I need some untraceable gold."
Still, you'd think there would be some follow up. "So Dave, how'd that bribery scheme turn out? Did the 3rdWDwaFH do the thing we wanted?"
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Well, maybe the bribe was supposed to be $100 million, he figured that $60 million would work and took the other $40 million home. It's not as if one gets receipts for that sort of thing.
This guy was hired way back in 2009! (Score:1)
That’s Obama, Trump1, Biden, and well into Trump2.
What’s more, he skated in with obviously fake educational and military credentials.
Sigh.
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Meanwhile, I often can't even get new clients to believe the demonstrably provable skills I actually have. One has to wonder what his magic trick was...
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Social skills.
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Maybe, or maybe leverage, like blackmail info.
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Meanwhile, I often can't even get new clients to believe the demonstrably provable skills I actually have. One has to wonder what his magic trick was...
Social skills.
They do come in handy in the spy business. Maybe more than one's education and work background.
Re: This guy was hired way back in 2009! (Score:2)
Nepotism is not magic.
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Whatâ(TM)s more, he skated in with obviously fake educational and military credentials.
Possibly a part of his legend [spymuseum.org].
Cover blown (Score:2)
And now his cover is blown. Isn't that the whole point of the CIA, lie with confidence, cheat and deceive. Maybe he pissed the wrong people off and cut them out.
uh (Score:5, Insightful)
From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, "a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses."
The problem with the CIA is not necessarily that they exist, but that they apparently operate without oversight. What the fuck is this?
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1000X ^^THIS
I am not say we never as nation need to conduct clandestine operations, but having an entire clandestine service is fundamentally at odds with the concept of representative governance, day light, and democracy.
The CIA should not exist. It should be shuttered and actually operations running agents and gathering intel should be returned to the DOD, and even if for reasons of operational security a considerable amount of activity has to be done off the record, the people running those activities s
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The problem with the CIA is not necessarily that they exist, but that they apparently operate without oversight. What the fuck is this?
That way no one gets in trouble when you do heinous illegal shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
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The problem with the CIA is not necessarily that they exist, but that they apparently operate without oversight. What the fuck is this?
Plausible deniability. [wikipedia.org] That's what it is.
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The problem with the CIA is not necessarily that they exist, but that they apparently operate without oversight. What the fuck is this?
This [wikipedia.org] is what the fuck it is.
I know. You're probably heartbroken that they didn't check with you about all the details of their operations.
Re:uh (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I'm just naive enough to believe that checks and balances have to work this way, but this is the first example in a while where it seems to me like the system is working.
They're the CIA. They don't need the FBI to wipe their ass for them, they chose not to wipe it. But the more important point is how was this considered a legitimate request to begin with? The only reason he'd need all that would be for some nefarious shit, like when the CIA imported cocaine in USFS planes.
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From the perspective of a foreign adversary, everything the CIA does is nefarious. Doing dastardly deeds on our behalf is their job.
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The only reason he'd need all that would be for some nefarious shit
Or they needed to bribe or hire a bunch of people.
That's not an "or".
everything the CIA does is nefarious. Doing dastardly deeds on our behalf is their job.
I am not paying taxes for the purpose of having feds violate the law, national or international.
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It's likely not bought with tax money. The company has various means.
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It's likely not bought with tax money. The company has various means.
Sure, it's bought with money from drug trafficking.
I don't want the CIA doing that either.
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Doing dastardly deeds on our behalf is their job.
But they're not being done dirt cheap.
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CIA deals with external threats (from outside the country), FBI deals with INTERNAL threats, aka citizens, home-grown terrorists, etc... CIA likely can't investigate as they don't usually handle internal threats, and lastly, if they think there may be more to this (more people found guilty) they may not do an internal investigation to let others they are eying know they are under investigation.
FBI and CIA have a known history of not relaying information, which is supposedly how 9-11-2021 happened. Even if
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CIA deals with external threats (from outside the country)
CIA is supposed to deal with external threats. Is this rule rigidly adhered to? Given what we have seen from the Wyden Siren, I seriously doubt that the CIA is holding to this rule.
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Foreign intelligence agencies recruiting Americans or conducting operations that cross our borders is a grey area. At some point, if what they discover is actionable here, they need to turn their information over to the FBI. The problem is: That then becomes a criminal case, which can tip their hand conducting further surveillance.
If you are a foreign agent inside the US, a sure way to see if counter-intel is on to you is to make a phone call and brag about the few thousand dollars in back taxes you hid f
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The CIA can't just make arrests on US soil. They actually do need the FBI to do that. That's another form of oversight.
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The problem with the CIA is not necessarily that they exist, but that they apparently operate without oversight. What the fuck is this?
Isn't the FBI arresting him a form of oversight?
No, the reason the FBI arrested him was because the CIA reported him to them.
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The CIA doesn't have police powers. The FBI does. Counter intelligence is a rather important duty of the FBI as well.
Ahem (Score:2)
> significant amounts of the foreign currency
I guess they are afraid of saying those were Russia roubles?
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This is the guy who got caught. (Score:1)
This is the guy who got caught with only $40 million gold (and rising). Imagine how much this agency has skimmed off from US taxpayers over the decades.
And then there's the Pentagon, which has never passed an audit.
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Imagine how much this agency has skimmed off from US taxpayers over the decades.
This is not how this works. It is all but certain that this was part of black budget stash. Typically, such off-the-books money are not from taxes, but from illegal activities (drugs, weapon, blackmail) that CIA has national security "license" to engage in.
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I know a guy doing it out in the open without consequence.
The CIA really loves this kind of recruit (Score:2)
I think leadership at CIA, at some level, knew the guy was a fraud. He b.s.'d his way into a naval officer commission. B.s.'d his way into the CIA front door after three attempts. Remember, CIA exists purely to break the rules in order to achieve its goals. You don't accomplish that hiring normal people.
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^^ Probably the most on-the-nose comment here. There are lots of exceptional people working at high level from unusual backgrounds. Unfortunately he got burn-noticed because he crossed the wrong person/s and was tipped off to local authorities, probably.
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I believe that is true. The world's intelligence agencies want good, honest and loyal analysts in the office, but people who they recruit for the field excel at deception, infiltration, manipulation, interrogation, torture. This guy seems perfect for a spy runner.
yeah that's how it works (Score:4, Informative)
The CIA doesn't do a lot of the overseas work with its own hands (putting aside the death squads made of former special operations soldiers). It's the "how do you do fellow kids" problem - how would anyone from the CIA infiltrate an organization overseas when the CIA officers are clearly not native? Finding competent sociopaths who speak the right language is hard enough (i.e., some white guy speaking Arabic could be sent to Africa), but even if the CIA officer happened to be of the right ethnicity there would be obvious differences in accent, local knowledge etc.
What the CIA does is it cultivates local sources, and those local sources need to be paid. Sometimes the payment is semi-honorable (e.g., pulling strings to get a kid into a good US college) but usually it's gold or a fancy watch. So this bozo claimed to have a bunch of sources who needed payment and thus requisitioned gold and watches to pay them, only he didn't. And he didn't realize that this is such an obvious way to steal that the CIA actually checks up on this.
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Blackmail and threats are cheaper than paying gold.
Inventing a boogeyman is cheaper still. Less likely to blow up in your face.
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Blackmail and threats are cheaper than paying gold.
And often more effective. Because you are working with basically honest people. But our counter-intel people know this and watch for it. So I assume foreign intel outfits do as well.
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I WOULD have assets, but they're not solid enough to pay yet. Each watch and gold bar is earmarked for assets in the pipeline. In the mean time, please send more gold bars and Rolexes to keep the pipeline full. I can't prove the assets are real because that would blow their cover, obviously. Moles, you know. Anyone could be a mole. You could be a mole. The boss is always the mole.
Sounds like a team effort (Score:2)
I could be wrong, but this sounds like a number of people had to be involved to pull this off.
I suspicious of the whole story down to wondering if there really is a "David Rush" and if so, was the person arrested even that David Rush".
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The executive branch is basically a mafia at this point too. He's probably just feeling the vibe.
Soon ... (Score:2)
wondering if there really is a "David Rush"
Can we just start over already? (Score:2)
The CIA has been doing nothing but making everything it touches turn to shit since the cold war. Just wipe the slate clean and start over.
Performance Metric: Skuls Dug: Excellent (Score:2)
Who every hired him (Score:2)
Needs to be fired. It's simple, if you don't vet people hired into a senior position of a federal agency, then you ought to be terminated as well. Actual qualified people apply for jobs and are skipped over to hire conmen. The process is broken and people should be deeply disturbed, both in terms of violating the public trust but also for the implications to national security.
Obligatory Juvenal (Score:3)
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Interesting charges (Score:2)
In his defense ... (Score:3)
He needed it for a tank of gas in his Ford F-150. :-)
does not indicate why his job (Score:2)
Her was also being extra cute. (Score:2)
He was also being, IMHO, extra cute with the amount of gold he 'requisitioned': 303 bars, 1 kg each, comes out to 666.6 pounds of gold. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.
The CIA's Greatest Hits (Score:2)
If you haven't read The CIA's Greatest Hits (https://www.amazon.com/CIAs-Greatest-Hits-Real-Story/dp/1593764391), I can't recommend it enough. It's a very small/short book, written by a political cartoonist (so it's half-illustrations, and a really easy read) ... but it will teach you A TON about the history of what the CIA actually does.
Once you've read it, the fact that the CIA is giving its agents the ability to access millions of dollars in gold bars will not surprise you in the slightest.
What's his crime? Hoarding is a felony? (Score:2)
i wonder if he'll ever get any of his loot back
oversight (Score:2)
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Why not both?