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Press Release

Former Air Force Senior Airman Found Guilty of Making a Fraudulent Demand Against the United States

For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of California

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After a two-day trial, a federal jury found Alyssa L. Gervais, 25, of Lincoln, guilty today of making a fraudulent demand against the United States, a misdemeanor, U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott announced.

According to evidence presented at trial, Gervais was a Senior Airman at Beale Air Force Base until her separation from the Air Force on January 10, 2019.  During her three years in the Air Force, Gervais worked in the finance section at Beale Air Force Base. After her separation, in February 2018, Gervais filed a travel reimbursement request in the form of a “travel voucher” seeking reimbursement for post-separation travel from Beale Air Force Base to her home of record in Indiana. In the travel voucher, Gervais claimed that she, her husband, and their toddler son drove two vehicles over the course of eight days and over 2,000 miles. Gervais’s claimed expenses amounted to approximately $773. The finance section later discovered that Gervais and her family never took the trip and were in California the whole time. Gervais later confessed to investigators that she attempted to defraud the government by submitting a false travel voucher.

At trial, Gervais recanted her confession and instead testified that she lawfully submitted the travel voucher in an attempt to obtain a monetary advance for a trip to Indiana that the family planned to take in the future. Witnesses from the finance department contradicted this story by testifying that a request for an advance would have required a completely different form and procedure, and Gervais knew this because she had worked in the very department that processed travel vouchers and advances.

This case is the product of an investigation by Beale Air Force Base’s Security Forces Investigations Unit. Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eric Chang and Robert Artuz are prosecuting the case.

Gervais is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kendall J. Newman on January 9, 2018. Gervais faces a maximum statutory penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. The actual sentence, however, will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.

Updated September 28, 2018

Topic
Financial Fraud
Press Release Number: 2:18-cr-091-KJN