Working for Multiple Employers at the Same Time Lands Contractor in Hot Water

In a rather interesting recent Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals case, a DoD contractor was denied security clearance eligibility due to personal conduct concerns revolving around how he neglected to get approval to work for additional companies and at one point, was employed by three different employers at the same time. Here are the highlights of his appeal.

The contractor has various IT certifications and was hired with Company #1 to do IT project work which he did from home. He took on a second job with another company, which explicitly had a requirement in their employee handbook to get approval for employment outside of their scope of work. Both jobs required him to provide 40 hours of work per week, and he billed both companies for the work even though he was not actually completing the full number of hours he billed for. He then picked up another job with a third employer and eventually it came to light that he was working for other companies who were competitors for government contracts and billing for hours not worked. As a result, he was fired from all three companies.

During his appeals hearing, the contractor was frank and up front in discussing the circumstances that led to his terminations, but the DOHA judge noted his violations were serious and too recent for the conduct to be mitigated – clearance eligibility denied. You can read the entire appeal summary here.