Ex-GSA official caught in M Resort confab sent to prison
A former federal administrator’s decision to bill U.S. taxpayers for a night at the M Resort in Henderson is forcing him to take another trip on Uncle Sam’s dime. This time around, he’ll be bunking in a federal prison instead of a resort.
Jeffrey Neely, 60, a retired regional commissioner with the U.S. General Services Administration, was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco to three months in prison.
The agency’s Office of Inspector General flagged Neely for problems beyond that one-night stay in 2010, when he went hiking with his wife and spent time at a Las Vegas spa. The OIG had investigated the agency’s Western Regions Conference in 2010, unearthing more than $822,000 in costs and a “general culture of wasteful spending,” court records show.
Neely played a central role in that episode, which sparked congressional inquiries into the GSA in 2012, according to Neely’s sentencing memorandum. The scandal forced the resignation of GSA chief Martha Johnson and firings of other high-level deputies amid revelations of the lavish conference.
Neely himself became a visible figure in the aftermath, when a widely circulated picture showed him sitting in a hot tub in a resort room overlooking the valley, glasses of wine at his side.
The federal investigation found that Neely submitted several falsified travel vouchers for other trips and tried to conceal it, court records show.
