Wertheim Branch Office (BO)

Wertheim Branch Office (BO)

As Gill mentioned, the life of a Criminal Investigation Division (CID) Branch Office (BO) Special Agent in Charge (SAC) is not always easy since there is just YOU most of the time to deal with crime 24/7.

While SAC at Wertheim BO with just me working crime was lucky Wurzburg FO would pull weekend duty for me every other weekend. Wurzburg was a good distance away and crime was jumping in Wertheim and it was shale we say a scenic drive to Wertheim and depending on the weather the drive could be endless.

One of the many way-out there investigations worked by me back in the day involved the post laundry! Yep, folks at the post laundry had been stealing sheets, pillow cases, blankets, and anything else laundry related and recycling similar laundry from most of the hotels in Wertheim and various other places.

Wertheim was no different than most places when it came to crime were the military and local nationals worked together, if it could be stolen someone was going to try and steal it, and come up with a good reason-why it was ok to do so
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The way this theft of government property worked was so ingrained into all who worked at the laundry no one had any idea what was going on was wrong. Military folks transferred in and transferred out but the civilians stayed right there for life and had the ability to make the theft look like there was no theft.

Most full-proof thefts tend to go unnoticed forever but most of the time when a key member of the theft is on leave for an extended amount of time or someone working on the inside decides they are not getting their share, the full-proof theft falls apart.

At Wertheim the head thief did not promote is third in scheme to second in scheme and promoted a family member to be second. After several weeks of being a very unhappy criminal the upset individual came to me about 9PM one night while I was at the Military Police Station in the CID BO.

Once the entire 40 years of theft was laid out the amounts were staggering and this was an on-going crime. The head thief had contracts with all the hotels in the area to do their laundry and even replace laundry as needed at bargain prices. The hotels were not aware or at least it was never proven they were aware what they were doing was wrong, the Army was just giving them a good deal and had been for years.

Before any of y’all get excited, remember these are my memories of the events that took place in the life and times of ME way back when. There is no plot to make folks mad or infer anything about the way we did the job or were directed to do the job. All of us were covered up with work back then and what looked like a small crime or no crime surprised us at times.

Contacted the SAC at Wurzburg and ran the case by him, he was not interested, did not think there would be enough theft involved and hard to prove it was theft since contracts were involved and the information did not seem believable.

Got no help from Wurzburg FO but went ahead and worked the theft myself, took some time since getting the contracts, contacting the hotels, and pulling surveillance with photographs was not easy to conceal so the bad guys and gals would not know what was taking place.

At the end of a six month investigation wrote the case for theft of millions of dollars and change! Yep the documents pulled showed the hotel contracts were not Army contracts and any and all money received was received by the ring of thieves and all the property involved for forty years was Army property.

The folks involved did not deny what was going on and said it was the way they had always worked at Wertheim and did not understand why the Army was upset about anything.

For all my work, got a smile for the FO getting credit for case, slap on the hand (got a 2 instead of a 1 in the rating block for loyalty of all things) for not explaining in more detail how much money and time was involved.

Never did find out what happened to the folks at the laundry or if the Army ever recovered money or property. The practice of doing laundry for other than Army units did stop; the rest is still a mystery.
We had lots of fun at Wurzburg and Wertheim back in the day…Smiles