A metallurgist from Washington state admitted to defrauding the US Navy for decades by falsifying the results of strength tests on steel used to build submarines, according to an Associated Press (AP) report.

Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, of Auburn, Washington, was the director of metallurgy at a Tacoma foundry that produced steel castings for submarine hulls manufactured by Navy contractors Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding.

According to a plea agreement filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma by the accused, Thomas manipulated the results of strength and hardness tests for at least 240 batches of steel — over half of the steel the foundry made for the Navy from 1985 through 2017. According to the Justice Department, the tests were conducted to demonstrate that the steel would not break in a crash or in specific "wartime scenarios."

No submarine hulls have failed

Although no submarine hulls were alleged to have failed, officials stated the Navy had increased expenses and upkeep to ensure they remained seaworthy. The administration refused to say which subs were impacted.

When Thomas is sentenced in February, she could face up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. The Justice Department, on the other hand, stated that it would propose a jail sentence at the low end of whatever the court judges to be "the standard sentencing range in her case."

Her attorney, John Carpenter, said Thomas "took shortcuts" in a statement filed in U.S. District Court on her behalf on Monday.

Carpenter stated that “Ms. Thomas never intended to compromise the integrity of any material and is gratified that the government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised.”

"Yeah, that looks bad," Thomas said to the investigators

In 2017, a metallurgist being groomed to replace Thomas spotted odd test findings and contacted their company, Kansas City-based Bradken Inc., which had purchased the foundry in 2008.

Thomas was fired. Bradken originally informed the Navy of the facts, but subsequently incorrectly claimed that the inconsistencies were not due to fraud. According to prosecutors, this hampered the Navy's investigation into the breadth of the problem as well as its measures to mitigate the risks to its sailors.

A deferred prosecution agreement in June 2020 made by the firm included the payment of $10.9 million by the firm.

"Yeah, that looks bad," Thomas said to the investigators when confronted with the doctored results, according to the Justice Department. She claimed that in some cases she modified the tests to passing grades because she thought the Navy's requirement to administer the examinations at negative-100 degrees Fahrenheit (negative-73.3 degrees Celsius) was "stupid."