A former CIA official is accused of stealing more than $40 million in gold bars and stashing them inside his Virginia home, prosecutors said.
Court records show that David J. Rush, who was a senior CIA official with a top-secret clearance, also hoarded $2 million in cash in a storage unit near his residence and had 35 luxury watches, mostly Rolexes, in his possession when the FBI conducted a raid on May 18.
Mr. Rush faces charges of criminal theft of public money for a scheme that authorities said started in November. He is scheduled to appear Friday in federal court in Virginia.
The filing said that at that time, Mr. Rush requested the CIA “to obtain a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.” Authorities recovered more than $40 million in gold bars at his home, but that stash is only a fraction of what he is accused of stealing.
“Based on an initial review by Rush’s employer, the [federal government] has been unable to locate the gold bars or significant amounts of the foreign currency Rush received pursuant to his requests or to identify the intended use of these funds,” the affidavit reads.
Court documents say Mr. Rush never explained why he wanted the gold, which he stopped collecting in March. FBI agents found 303 gold bars while searching his home last week.
Prosecutors did not say when Mr. Rush left the CIA or what his job duties were for the agency, but much of the affidavit focused on the suspect’s lies about his education and military service.
Mr. Rush claimed on his CIA application that he completed his undergraduate studies at South Carolina’s Clemson University in 2000 and received a master’s degree from New York state’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2004, according to the filing. Neither school had records of him attending their institutions.
The affidavit says Mr. Rush used his phony Clemson degree to join the U.S. Navy Reserves in 2004. He was honorably discharged from the service in February 2015 at the rank of lieutenant.
But when the suspect applied for the CIA in 2009, the documents say he listed a fraudulent certificate from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School to help get the job.
Mr. Rush allegedly cited a pilot certificate to earn a senior-level role at the agency in 2018 and said he was still leading a joint Army-Navy aircraft weapons testing team, despite having been out of the service for three years at that point.
Prosecutors said that in that same application, Mr. Rush falsely claimed to be amid an 11-year tenure as a thesis and dissertation adviser at the Air Force Institute of Technology.
The filing says Mr. Rush referenced his misleading military service to commit 744 hours of time card fraud, costing the federal government roughly $77,000. He last took military leave in September, the documents said.
