[Kalzazz]

I'm not sure how well marked vests are. My experience with thrust vests is they lack serial numbers and for inventory purposes are marked with a sharpie.

The government Does Not Like mysterious spending of money. Buying a keyboard, ink cartridge or bag of flour outside of the normal supply chain requires the moving of heaven and earth

If they are like thrust vests I'm used to, they eventually start to wear out, so the agency notes them as worn out, has a couple people destroy them and witness the destruction, and orders new ones per their TOE

So pick out two vests from inventory, file they were damaged/worn out, then witness there destruction but instead of destroying them just redact the inventory numbers etc

I would find that much more believable as a discrete off the books way of making vests happen then prying 1000 bucks off a credit card in straight cash