DENVER - Nearly three dozen employees and contractors of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are accused of viewing pornography on work computers while on the job.
They're all accused of accessing sexually explicit images on government computers.
9NEWS has learned some of them work out of the SEC's Denver regional office.
Denver attorney Kevin Evans wanted to know the offices and names of employees accused of accessing the porn while on the job.
"This is something I did; my firm did, because we're fed up," Evans said.
That's why he recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
A judge has denied his request to get the names of the Denver employees involved.
The Denver regional office, which is housed in the downtown Qwest building, is one of seven across the U.S. that had employees accessing the sites according to investigators.
According to the Inspector General Report, the images on the sites include transvestites and images of male and female body parts.
Evans was able to find out the employees' positions, but not their names.
"Some of these SEC employees, these lawyers, were making well over $200,000 a year for spending hours, countless hours at their computer, not working, but engaging in pleasure in whatever form," Evans said. "They were getting paid to work and they weren't working. If I had done that in private practice and billed a client for it, my license would have been at least suspended if not revoked."
Evans says the incidents happened between 2005 and 2010.
"What happened here is a significant waste of taxpayer's resources. We're not talking about an employee or two sitting at their terminal for an hour or two during the day. What we uncovered was this was pervasive at the SEC, and we're talking about a significant amount of time," Evans said.
Evans' bio says he is currently representing a client in a separate lawsuit involving the SEC, but he says his interest in this case has nothing to do with that.
9NEWS has left a message for Don Hoerl, the director of SEC's Denver regional office, but have not heard back from him.
He told our partners at The Denver Post "no comment" earlier on Tuesday.
Twenty four of the 33 employees investigated have reportedly resigned, were suspended or disciplined.
Human resources company Mountain States Employers Council says cases like this should serve as a reminder to what's appropriate in the workplace.
"Everything they do online is traceable; they leave digital footprints wherever they go, so the e-mails they send are trackable by an employer, their browsing history is trackable by an employer," Mark Parcheta with MSEC said.
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