A former Capitol Hill staffer who served under Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) has pled guilty for fraudulently stealing around $80,000 from the federal government. The staffer, 24-year-old Sterling Carter, “pleaded guilty today to theft of public funds in connection with his scheme to fraudulently inflate his salary and bonus payments, thereby paying himself more than he was legitimately owed,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a press release. According to the DOJ, Carter was responsible for managing the payroll in Schneider’s office, and he used that position to give himself unauthorized payouts from public funds. “Carter concealed this theft from the Congressperson and the office’s Chief of Staff by falsely representing, in both communications and a budget spreadsheet, that he was only being paid what he was legitimately owed,” the DOJ said. The theft was discovered after an FBI investigation. In Carter’s criminal charging papers (pdf) Frank G. D’Amico, …