High ranking Bush official supplements his income with retail theft

I just heard this story, though it broke a couple of weeks ago. Claude Allen was a Domestic Policy Advisor to President Bush, a very high-ranking African-American in the Bush Administration. He resigned because he was arrested for stealing about $5000 from Target stores (he would buy an item, take it out to his car, take the receipt back into the store, take the same item off the shelf and return the unbought item for a refund). Several things about this story strike me as odd. It seems like such a labor-intensive way to make money -- in fact, I'm surprised someone with such a demanding job had the time to do this. It's especially weird, because he could make twice what he stole in a single honorarium by giving a speech at a university or other organization. Obviously he has a problem, because it's just not a rational thing to do. The spin is that he "snapped," but that doesn't sound viable. It took awhile to rip off $5000 in this way. There's something more serious going on. Sad and weird. Seems like the wheels are really coming off the Bush/Republican bus (see, for example, Duke Cunningham).