An official assigned to investigate fraud at a city agency turned out to be among those charged with embezzling over $450,000 that was supposed to help needy children, authorities said Wednesday.

Nigel Osarenkhoe, supervisor of adoptions in the Payment Services Department of the Administration for Children's Services, is charged in Manhattan along with another ACS official and two foster agency workers. Some of the money, stolen since 2004, was used on an $84,000 BMW, a 2006 Range Rover and $30,000 in rent for an apartment with a private garage, authorities said.

Osarenkhoe "truly betrayed the trust of ACS," Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city's Department of Investigation, said at a news conference.

More parasitism. These crimes are not so dangerous in themselves, as the societal development they reflect is. It's a sign of decay. All the parasitic people are coming out of their woodwork to grab what they can and then run off to save themselves. That behavioural pattern means we have become hardcore individualists who only see desperate self-interest as the only way of "participating" with society. No wonder this system is about to fall apart.