Man charged with stealing FBI car from bureau headquarters in D.C.
Washington DC February 9 2024
A man working as a contractor at FBI headquarters in downtown D.C. stole a bureau car from the building’s basement garage Tuesday and was arrested hours later after trying to drive onto the grounds of an FBI facility in Northern Virginia, authorities said.
John C. Worrell III, 39, is charged with theft of government property. He was able to take the green Ford sedan from the garage because the FBI agent to whom it was assigned had left the keys in the vehicle, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington. The complaint says agents routinely leave keys in their bureau cars in the garage so that attendants can move them around.
Authorities did not specify the type of work Worrell had been doing for the FBI. He had not appeared in court as of Thursday afternoon, and his attorney, Jay Mykytiuk, declined to comment on the case. Worrell could not be reached for comment.
After leaving the garage shortly before 12:30 p.m., Worrell traveled to an FBI facility in Vienna, Va., and was stopped by a guard as he tried to drive onto the grounds about 2 p.m., according to the complaint. “Worrell identified himself as the Victim Agent … and displayed the Victim Agent’s FBI credentials,” which the agent had left in a bag in the car.
Wearing the agent’s sunglasses, Worrell “claimed to have a classified meeting at the Vienna FBI facility,” the complaint says. “When Worrell was unable to provide FBI access cards that matched the Victim Agent’s identity,” he was denied entry and told to park in a nearby visitors lot. About 10 minutes later, he again tried to drive onto the grounds and was again turned away, according to the complaint.
“Over the course of the next 45 minutes, Worrell was repeatedly approached by security personnel,” the complaint says. He was arrested after showing Vienna police his Virginia driver’s license, which did not match the agent’s credentials.
When interviewed by authorities, Worrell said he “believed he had been receiving coded messages, which appeared in various forms including e-mails, ‘stage whispering,’ and a variety of different context clues over the course of several weeks, indicating that Worrell was in danger, and thus he was attempting to go to a secure facility where he could be ‘safe,’” the complaint says.
