In testimony before a House of Representatives subcommittee, Gordon S. Heddell, the Acting Inspector General of the Department of Defense, listed numerous appalling examples of wasteful payments to defense contractors, mostly dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most outrageous was the case of C&D Distributors of Lexington, South Carolina, which, among other transgressions, collected $998,798.33 to ship two 19-cent lock washers by taking advantage of the Pentagon’s automated system for shipping charges. The company was owned by twin sisters, one of whom, Darlene Wooten, committed suicide after being contacted by federal investigators. On the day she killed herself, Wooten wrote a check to the government for $4.5 million. The other sister, Charlene Corley, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges in August 2007. However, Corley still has not gone to prison, and on Friday, her lawyer appealed for leniency, claiming that it was all Wooten’s fault and that Corley, as a volunteer, transformed an autistic child into an honor student.