She made the statement as part of a 20-page document outlining a code of ethics for the advertising industry. The document is part of Seifert's sentence, ordered by Judge Richard Berman, along with a $125,000 fine and the spell in prison, after she was found guilty of defrauding the government.
In the draft document, sent to Judge Berman yesterday, Seifert hints that she believes she has taken the fall for other figures. Dedicating the document to "frontliners everywhere", she writes: "If you are a frontliner, you are more likely to find yourself in the line of fire. And it may be better for others if you take a bullet."
On a more prosaic note, Seifert uses the code to warn the ad industry that more emphasis needs to be placed on processes, saying: "Boring work has never resulted in a prison sentence. Poor timekeeping practices have."
Seifert, along with another O&M colleague Thomas Early, staunchly denied charges that they had told staff to falsify time sheets and inflate the number of hours they had worked on the account, after discovering that the agency had billed the government $3m less than anticipated.
However, the prosecution supplied evidence in the form of email messages, including one in which Seifert vowed: "I'll wring the money out of them. I promise". They had also used handwriting analysis on timesheets, which indicated that Seifert had ordered a shift in billings from other accounts to the ONDCP account.
Seifert is due to start her prison sentence next week. Early was also sentenced to 14 months in prison, and a fine of $10,000.
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