A study by a government watchdog found that misconduct within the Transportation Security Administration including skipping work, sleeping on the job and allowing banned items through checkpoints has risen 26 percent over the last three years, according to NBC News.

In the three year study by the Government Accountability Office 9,622 cases of employee misconduct were recorded. The cases range from minor infractions like falling asleep on the job to major criminal activity including two employees who stole $40,000 from a passenger at John F. Kennedy Airport, according to NBC News.

Some relief can be found in knowing that only 20 percent of the cases involved a violation of security standards. Close to a third of the cases of misconduct were related to attendance. Most of the offenses were dealt with via letters of reprimand while 17 percent of the cases necessitated termination of the employee, according to USA Today.

"While TSA has taken steps to help manage the investigations and adjudication process, such as providing training to TSA staff at airports ,additional procedures could help TSA better monitor the investigations and adjudications process," Stephen Lord, the director of homeland security issues for the GAO, said in his report.

Aviation security expert Jeff Price told ABC News that he finds the report's findings troubling.

"I get worried about this because in the history of air terrorism, employee security has been the one gap that has been the hardest gap to cover," Price said.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., has been critical of the TSA for quite some time and ordered the audit, according to CNN.

"There's not even a way to properly report some of the offenses, so this may be just the tip of the iceberg for some of the offenses," Mica said. "Why are there so many cases and, then, what is TSA doing about it? The report says they can't really get a handle on it. That raises a lot of issues."

A case from 2011 involved a former officer named Al Raimi stealing small portions of cash from travelers passing through his security checkpoint at Newark Liberty International Airport for close to a year. When he would take money he would give part of his haul to a supervisor so that he would not be reprimanded. Over the course of a year he stole between $10,000 and $30,000. Rami pleaded guilty when he was caught, according to CNN.

The TSA is working alongside the GAO to make sure that they fix what is wrong and cut down on the number of infractions.

"TSA concurs with GAO's four recommendations to ensure that the agency establishes a process to verify that TSA staff at airports are in compliance, and is already working to implement these recommendations," the report said.

The House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing with TSA Deputy Administrator John W. Halinski to go over the report and what the TSA is doing to fix the problems revealed within it on Wednesday, according to ABC News.