Ogilvy and Mather execs charged today with conspiracy for drug war ad overcharges

From AP: Advertising executives charged with cheating U.S. in $684M anti-drug campaign.

A current and a former executive at the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency were charged Tuesday with conspiracy for allegedly overbilling the U.S. government for a campaign to reduce the illegal drug trade. ..
According to the indictment, from May 1999 through April 2000, Early and Seifert engineered “an extensive scheme to defraud the United States government by falsely and fraudulently inflating the labour costs.”
Among other allegations, they are said to have directed employees to lie about their working hours after a 1999 analysis showed Ogilvy & Mather was going to get $3 million less than it had expected for its first year of work on the contract.

Now if we can just go after the drug czar for conspiring to cheat the taxpayers by using tax money to fund lies and propaganda. (Hey, I can dream, can’t I?)