Peter Bang was shaking.
The 20-year Montgomery County employee sat before the county attorney and his deputy in a conference room in Rockville, staring at the piece of paper in front of him. He was being placed on leave without pay for stealing more than $6.7 million in public funds over six years, by far the largest embezzlement scheme in the affluent suburb’s history.
Bang “was trembling; he was shaking the whole time,” Deputy County Attorney John Markovs said. “He lowered his head and seemed resigned to the fact he had been caught.”
Byung Il “Peter” Bang, a numbers and budget guy, was also an embezzler and a gambler, according to court filings — bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars to casinos across the country even as he wagered he would get away with stealing millions from Montgomery County coffers...
...“Neither the people below him or above him seemed to be able to answer questions about the department’s finances,” said Jacob Sesker, then the County Council’s economic development analyst.
Bang’s appearance added to the effect.
“He was always the best-dressed man in the room,” said Sesker, now a senior legislative analyst with the county. “It’s not that often you’re in a room full of people both in the public and private sector, and the best-dressed person is a bureaucrat.”..
...Bang then directed money from the county toward a false company that seemed to be created for the scam, with a name evoking the province: Chungbuk Incubator Fund LLC. He approved the LLC’s fake invoices, directing the county to hold the checks for him to pick up. The money went to bank accounts associated with Bang’s home address in Germantown.
The scheme ended after Montgomery privatized its economic development functions in 2016, doing away with Bang’s department — and his ability to direct funds with apparent impunity. Bang was transferred to the county’s finance department.
And there he might have stayed if the Internal Revenue Service hadn’t knocked on the county attorney’s door with a summons in April 2017...
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