The objective of the audit was to assess the overall effectiveness of the BFD's property controls from procurement through disposal. Since FBI Headquarters, not the BFD, is responsible for ensuring that disposals of property meet federal regulations, we limited our testing in this area to the BFD's compliance with the FBI Headquarters requirements. In addition, the BFD informed us of their impending relocation and, therefore, we observed physical security control, but performed no testing in this area. We conducted our audit in accordance with Government Auditing Standards and included such tests as were considered necessary to accomplish our objectives.

As part of our audit, we conducted interviews with various officials from FBI Headquarters and the BFD, including the Section Chief and Unit Chief from the FBI's Property Procurement and Management Section, the BFD Administrative Officer, the BFD Lead Supply Technician, and the nine BFD property custodians. We performed our fieldwork at the Baltimore, Maryland, and satellite offices of the BFD.

We obtained an understanding of the FBI and the BFD's property management system and procedures by reviewing pertinent documents, including the Justice Property Management Regulations, the FBI's Accountable Property Memorandum, and FBI policy memoranda. In addition, we reviewed Property Management Application property records and the property databases maintained by four property custodians. We also reviewed Stull's case file and met with an investigator from the joint investigation of Stull's property thefts from the BFD.

In addition, we performed testing at the BFD to assess its inventory controls. Specifically, we tested to determine whether the BFD could locate items of inventory, both from Property Management Application listings and from property listings maintained by property custodians. We also tested to determine whether property procured in various manners was added to the Property Management Application and whether property currently in use at the BFD had been entered into the Property Management Application, if appropriate. In addition, we tested the BFD's credit card reconciliation process to verify the presence of documentation for the charges. For the inventory testing, our samples were statistically selected. In all other cases, our samples were judgmentally selected.