GSA Watchdog Who Broke Vegas Scandal to Retire

Brian Miller, the General Services Administration’s inspector general who in 2012 set in motion the conference spending scandal that shook up the agency’s leadership, will retire as of April 19, his office announced on Monday.

“The time has now come for me to seek new opportunities,” Miller said in a letter to President Obama. He will go to work for Navigant, a global dispute and investigation advisory firm with a Washington office.

Expressing gratitude for the opportunity to pursue a variety of federal assignments, Miller, an attorney, said, “I prosecuted terrorists, fraudsters [and] drug kingpins, represented a federal magistrate judge and represented the attorney general in a series of cases arising out of 9/11 in the Eastern District of New York. My federal career has been unbelievably exciting and I am sorry to leave federal service.”

During his nearly nine years on the job as GSA’s watchdog, Miller recovered more than $1 billion in civil settlements from companies that allegedly violated the False Claims Act, his office reported Monday. He also created new programs in forensic auditing and counterfeit product infiltration prevention, and his team recovered stolen New Deal art work.

In a March 2011 interview with Government Executive, Miller said, “We currently save $17 for every $1 invested in our office. We could do more if we had more resources.”

The IG office’s hard-hitting report on the 2010 Western Regions Conference of GSA’s Public Buildings Service detailed how more than $820,000 was spent for a four-day event for 300 that included a mind-reader, a bicycle building exercise, commemorative coins and private executive receptions. The revelations resulted in a governmentwide crackdown on conference extravagance and the resignations of Administrator Martha Johnson, PBS Commissioner Robert Peck and several others. Some have since won reinstatement.