On March 12, 2010 the Department of Justice announced that Michel Jamil (age 60, of Annandale, VA) was sentenced to 40 months in prison for his participation in a scheme “to steal approximately 10 million gallons of fuel” from the U.S. Army in the Iraq Theater of Operations.

Napoleon Bonaparte famously said, “An army travels on its stomach.”  In a more general sense, the success of military forces in faraway lands is obviously dependent on the quality its supply chain management and logistics skills.  Oil and gasoline are also obviously key supplies for the modern army.  As this 2006 report notes, “The U.S. military is the biggest purchaser of oil in the world.”  In 2004, the U.S. Defense Department spent $8.2 billion purchasing more than 100 million barrels of fuel.  A 2001 Defense Science Board Task Force reportedly stated that “Because DOD’s consumption of oil represents the highest priority of all uses, there will be no fundamental limits to DOD’s fuel supply for many, many decades.”  A May 2005 article in Atlantic Monthly reportedly said—

The U.S. military now uses about 1.7 million gallons of fuel a day in Iraq. …each of the 150,000 soldiers on the ground consumes roughly nine gallons of fuel a day. And that figure has been rising. … The Third Army (of General Patton) had about 400,000 men and used about 400,000 gallons of gasoline a day. Today the Pentagon has about a third that number of troops in Iraq yet they use more than four times as much fuel.

So when the DoJ says 10 million gallons of fuel was stolen “for subsequent sale on the black market” it is not only talking about pedestrian theft of government property; it is also talking about an attempt to sabotage the military efforts and to harm the warfighters.

What was going on?  According to the DoJ—

Jamil admitted that in March 2007, he and two of his co-conspirators arranged for the creation of a false memorandum for record (MFR) authorizing individuals, purportedly on behalf of a company serving as a contractor to the U.S. government, to draw fuel from the Victory Bulk Fuel Point (VBFP), Camp Liberty, Iraq, which was owned and operated by the United States. The VBFP supplies aviation and diesel fuel to both military units and U.S. government contractors operating in and around the Victory Base Complex. Jamil admitted that he and his co-conspirators used this false MFR and others to steal large quantities of fuel from the U.S. Army for subsequent sale on the black market. Jamil admitted that he escorted the trucks to retrieve fuel from the VBFP using a false MFR on approximately 10 to 15 occasions. As a result of the scheme, Jamil received between $75,000 and $87,500 in personal profits.

The DoJ announcement continued—

In related cases, Robert Jeffery was convicted … of one count of conspiracy and one count of theft of government property for his role in the fuel theft. Evidence at trial established that Jeffery served as an escort for the fuel trucks and illegally retrieved hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel from the VBFP. … Jeffery was sentenced to four years in prison. Robert Young pleaded guilty … to participating in the same scheme. …Young admitted that he and his co-conspirators employed several individuals to serve as drivers and escorts of the trucks containing the stolen fuel. Young admitted that he received approximately $1 million in personal profits from the scheme. …Young was sentenced to 97 months in prison. Lee William Dubois pleaded guilty … to participating in the same scheme. …Dubois admitted that he obtained government-issued common access cards for the drivers and escorts of the trucks and also presented false documents to the VBFP authorizing his co-conspirators to draw fuel. Dubois admitted that he received at least $450,000 in personal profits from the scheme. …Dubois was sentenced to three years in prison.

Given the importance of fuel to the warfighters in Southwest Asia, we think these conspirators got off very lightly.