U.S. News
A CIA Official Faked a Military Career and Brought $40 Million in Gold Bars Home From Work
By Mike Harper · May 28, 2026
David Rush told the CIA he was a decorated Navy Reserve captain and a graduate of the Air Force Test Pilot School. He was neither. On the strength of that fabricated resume, he rose to the senior executive service — the highest rank available to civilian government employees — obtained a top-secret clearance, and spent five months requesting tens of millions of dollars in gold bars from the federal government for what he described as “work-related expenses.”
The CIA could not locate the gold. The FBI found it.
On May 18, FBI agents searched Rush’s home in Virginia and recovered approximately 303 one-kilogram gold bars with an estimated value exceeding $40 million. They also found $2 million in US currency and 35 luxury watches, most of them Rolexes. A portion of additional funds was found in a storage space near his office. Rush was arrested on May 19 and charged with criminal theft of public money.
“After a CIA internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the FBI for a law enforcement investigation.”
Between November 2025 and March 2026, Rush made multiple requests to the CIA for large quantities of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars, claiming they were for work-related expenses. His employer — confirmed by sources to be the CIA — was unable to locate the gold or determine its intended use. The charging documents describe the sequence as a systematic acquisition of government assets that has no obvious explanation. The FBI affidavit states that Rush’s claims about his military background were false: he was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2015 and had no affiliation with the Navy Reserve afterward. He nonetheless claimed 744 hours of military leave worth approximately $77,000 in the years following that discharge.
The most extraordinary unanswered question in the case is what the gold was for. The charging documents do not explain why a CIA officer would bring $40 million in government gold bars to his private residence, what the intended use was, or how the scheme functioned within the CIA’s financial controls. Rush is charged with one count of stealing public money — the formal charge covers the timecard fraud, not the gold — because investigators are still piecing together the full picture of his conduct.
Rush is being held in jail while both his defense attorneys and federal prosecutors gather information for a detention hearing that has been postponed to June 5 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. His attorneys did not comment publicly. The CIA and FBI said in a joint statement that the investigation is continuing.
The gold, the cash, and the Rolexes are in federal custody. The questions they raise are not yet answered.