Garrison Courtney talked about a game.
In his genuine life, he was an ex-flack of the middle-aged government with a damaged marriage and a lot of unpaid bills. But when he tried to execute his candy communication magic on an unsuspecting business leader, he was someone else.
He was then a Gulf War veteran with a lot of casualties to his credit, who vividly remembered choking on the thick black smoke of Iraq’s oil fields. He was a ClA agent who might well reveal the secret that a foreign government had tried to poison him.
He was a patriot who needed help. He looked for those corporations to put him on his payroll and give him a “cover” to look like a citizen and not a globe-trotting spy. Companies, of course, would be rewarded for their help with giant government contracts.
Nor can you give them too much data about their work; highly classified, after all. But there were secret execution teams with dark names, Alpha-214 and FirstNet, who would possibly have been supporting special operations in Africa.
There were genuine ClA and Pentagon documents. Information meetings were held through army and government intelligently religious officers. There were appointments in secure rooms known as SCIF, where business leaders were tapped and unloaded from their phones.
At least a dozen companies, along with several successful defense contractors, joined Courtney’s crazy stories and paid him more than $4 million.
They had no idea that Courtney had never noticed any action in the military, or that his respiratory disorders were due to firefighting in his local Montana. That there is no Alpha-214 or FirstNet and that the documents were forged. This Courtney wasn’t a ClA agent, but he was a criminal who had just committed a mind-blowing scam.
Courtney’s ploy, as described in unsealed court documents after pleading guilty this summer, was a success because he complicated others a narrative that, in retrospect, appears to have been conceived through an amateur spy novelist.
He completed it, in part, through public officials in the spaces of law enforcement, the military and intelligence as what federal prosecutors described as “involuntary supports.”
The pawns included a former high-ranking naval officer, a member of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and at least two of the Drug Control Administration, where Courtney had served as a spokesman in the mid-2000s.
The offender’s documents do not mention those who were drawn to Courtney’s circle of lies, however, a similar civil lawsuit shows that one of his alleged affiliates, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer named Virgil James Keith, and one of the public officials, Eileen K. Preisser, Air Force Liaison Officer with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA).
Another call to emerge: the retired Air Force Brigadier. General Michael Lee, who led the NGA forerunner before the touchdown work with a number of well-known defense contractors, adding one that also hired Courtney.
The general’s company was the victim of the scam, even though Lee had been warned through a rival corporate contractor that Courtney could not be trusted. The correspondence reviewed through The Daily Beast shows that the rival businessman also alerted the government in 2013 and then watched with horror that nothing had happened for years.
“It’s a story, but it’s all true,” said the businessman, whom we call K.B. “I’ve been telling this story for years and everyone thinks I made it up.”
What Courtney has achieved, not only in the face of government officials, but also his own, has left the experienced investigators astonished. Wayne McElrath has spent his entire career pursuing criminals, but the complexity of Courtney’s fraud, as described in the court documents, has stunned him.
“The number of variables he controlled was incredible,” said McElrath, former director of forensic investigations at the Government’s Office of Responsibility. “I sit here in amazement. After 26 years in law enforcement, I’ve never noticed anything so sophisticated. It literally looks like a Hollywood movie.
In 2012, a few years after leaving the DEA, Courtney ran his own consulting firm, optimized Performance Inc.’s ultra-soft call, described in his electronic signature as a “small company owned by a veteran with a service disability.”
K.B., who was running for a Blackwater-type company in the D.C. domain at the time, brought Courtney through a mutual friend and hired him independently, hoping he could bring in more federal work. And why not? Courtney had worked at the highest levels of a government agency, had an official security clearance, and had already been reviewed very well through the United States government.
“If you know him, you think, “Wow, this guy’s great,” KB told The Daily Beast.” He knows everyone, he’s wiseArray … I’m a former intelligence officer and I’m a pretty wise character to make judgments and you know what, it’s fucking wise. He took me to a lot of senior government officials. He legitimately knows other people.
At meetings, Courtney attracted impressive contacts, such as Mike Braun, former Special Operations Manager at DEA, K.B. he told me. Lucrative deA FAST contracts, now dissolved, or “advisory groups deployed abroad” were reported, killing drug traffickers and suspected terrorism abroad in military-style operations.
Garrison Courtney (8:53:58): I just left you a message. The DEA will give you $3 million
K.b. (8:56:33): Is the scope logistics?
Garrison Courtney (8:57:20 AM): Logistics in the form of RAPID movement in any of Quantico’s instructions to Afghanistan
Courtney eliminated high-ranking officials in the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and also called a voluntary network of contracting agents there, according to emails reported through The Daily Beast.
“Hey Garrison, how are you?” a senior contract specialist from USACE wrote to Courtney in 2012. “I wonder how you think our assembly took place. I have to apologize for not being as loud as I would have liked. I just tried to make sure I didn’t cause any clash of interest. It’s good to see you again. You’re crazy and I love it!
“Sometimes I think I trained him too well as an actor,” said Krystina Thiel, who is a theater instructor at Courtney’s Great Falls High School in Montana.
Courtney, an army boy, born in the Philippines while his father, Glen, was stationed there in the Air Force. But he grew up in Great Falls with his four siblings, all of whom have names that begin with the letter G.
He is a regular student, who appears on the honor lists of the number one school. In high school, his ambition was evident: he worked as an assistant student, excelled on the debate team, played in the jazz group, board staff component, component participated in the theater team and was named student body president.
Courtney enjoyed the highlights and enjoyed playing. Thiel remembered him as “affable and simple to love, but not sincere. He”never showed himself to anyone, ” he says.
“Garrison has been a guy who ‘idea’, ” continued the theater teacher. “In high school, he was the typical clown of elegance who had millions of thoughts, plans and projects in his brain. He has sought an angle: tactics to miss classes and not be caught, guyipular systems and people, and create stories about his life.
Thiel said Courtney was so smart at driving that he already gave him a little life tip.
“I tell him he had to use his powers for good, not evil,” he says.
The 1994 Great Falls High School yearbook is a Courtney quote that now proves ironic: “It’s hard to concentrate now when you have to worry about the future.”
But at the time, his long career seemed brilliant. He joined the National Guard to pay for his college studies – “I liked the haircut,” joked in an interview for the yearbook – and enrolled at Montana State University-Northern, where he wrote the campus newspaper. He temporarily moved to the University of Montana for studies in audiovisual journalism.
His UM roommate, Bill Foley, told the Daily Beast that he was a campus comic that made almost the best impressions.
“I would go home to my bedroom and every day I would get a new message from an answering machine,” Foley told the Daily Beast. “Whether it’s Kermit the Frog or Arnold Schwarzenegger, they were fun.”
A 1998 article by Montana Kaimin, the UM student newspaper, stated that Courtney was also a radio DJ and “part-time model” and claimed to be a third-grade black belt in Shaolin Chin-na kung fu. He said he was training martial arts to his comrades, for example, to give them “the skills needed to deal with real-life threats and harmful situations.”
Foley, who now works as an athlete at Butte, admits it was hard to know what was genuine and what to brag about with Courtney.
Did you book a series of stand-up concerts one summer and then cancel them all because they asked you to sign up for the UM football team? Was he a component of the team and then he got a cut because he failed his physique? And when he said he couldn’t post the canceled performances in an ebook, was it true? Foley’s not entirely sure.
“I never had a serious verbal exchange with Garrison because he never turned it off,” Foley said. “It was like living with Robin Williams, an appearance in Letterman.”
But Courtney surprised him.
“Next thing you know, he says he’s going to be an entertainer,” Foley said. I think it’s complete, but the next game of the house is coming and he’s in the box with the cheerleaders, in uniform … He did so many things that didn’t seem realistic, but he sold them to you. »
After Courtney graduated from UM in 2000, her charm offense continued, now as a meteorologist for KPAX-TV, CBS’s subsidiary in Missoula. The Missoula Independent named him the most productive forecaster of 2000, and he was the “celebrity cameo” at a local Cinderella ballet.
Then we went to the CBS station in Eugene, Oregon, where a former colleague remembers it as “more interested in being fun than making time.” At KVAL, Courtney had a one-year contract that required her to erase any adjustments to her appearance with management. So it was a surprise when he showed up to paint one day with white blond hair.
“He said it all charityArray … However, anyone on TV knows that if you replace your appearance, they can shoot you,” the former colleague said. “[The news director] didn’t realize it until he was already on the air. When he found out, he came out and said, “You go by the house and don’t come back until you look like before.”
A station manager who worked with Courtney remembered him as an “affable, big-legged guy.”
“When I heard [the case], I thought, “Did this guy do this?” It just didn’t seem possible,” the station manager said. “My impression wouldn’t have been for him to be mean or wise enough to idiocy anyone between $4 million.”
Another former colleague, however, remembered Courtney as an artist, no doubt, out there. Liar from day one.
“He liked to communicate about himself, that’s for sure,” the colleague said. “He once told me that he was in the army, as a time observer, that he had gone out to do some surveys and blow anything up. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’s fair. weather records do not explode”.
After a few years in the news, Courtney accepted a position as a public affairs officer for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. He followed in the footsteps of his father, who worked for the U.S. Border Patrol as an intelligence analyst after retiring from the Air Force in 1992.
Courtney’s wife, Norine Han, who had been his television rival in Oregon, also worked for the INS. In 2004, the two moved to Washington, D.C., where Courtney accepted a position as communications manager for Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) before leaving in 2005 to a deed spokesman.
It is known why Courtney left the DEA in 2009, but at the time he and Norine had a baby of almost 3 years. Courtney’s online resume indicates that he then worked for less than a year as a manufacturer for TMZ.
Around 2010, he alone with Optimized Performance, bringing online marketing specialists to do business with Uncle Sam as customers. Just two years later, he admitted to court documents, Courtney embarked on his high-risk shell game.
Based on his experience and contacts with the government, Courtney approached the leaders of more than a dozen defense corporations and convinced them that he was part of a silent working group. Sometimes it’s Alpha-214, sometimes First Net.
The program, he told them, was established through senior government officials, adding the president, director of national intelligence and DEA administrator. And for him to bring out his canopy operations, he needed a “commercial canopy,” a civil painting that seemed plausible. It had to look really legitimate, otherwise his canopy would be destroyed and someone could die. And that conveniently meant Courtney deserved to be on the payroll, cashing a paycheck.
He included a kind of moment, also supposedly clA, in the deal. Although not mentioned in the case of offender opposed to Courtney, the spouse was known through K.B. and was shown in civil court filings as Virgil Keith, who worked with Courtney on cybersecurity contractor Blue Canopy. (Keith, who has not been charged with any crime, recently posted a public message on LinkedIn “thanking” Courtney for “completely ruining his life.” He did not respond to several requests for interviews).
To prevent you from the kind of loose communication that the scam may reveal, Courtney created false non-disclosure agreements that prohibit any discussion about the groups they run, their alleged activities or even Courtney’s name.
Despite these precautions, Courtney’s operational safety is not limited. On at least one occasion, K.B. said, he saw Courtney walking with classified documents that were not well protected.
“I thought, “You want to clear this up right now, man, ” he told Courtney. “It’s a problem.”
Courtney told the victims that the CIA had decided that they should go under cover-up under classified programs, and provided them with false documents informing them. He diminished any consideration his victims may have had in offering false “immunity from prosecution” documents, allegedly signed through the Attorney General.
Walking the tightrope of duplicity, Courtney also persuaded U.S. government officials. That they had been selected to be part of Alpha-214 or FirstNet, and then fake speech issues for meetings they had organized with the victim companies.
Company executives left the seats convinced that Courtney was genuine, while prosecutors said officials never suspected they were being used to legitimize a scam.
Courtney attempted to “influence one of the government officials, a U.S. army civilian worker assigned to an intelligence agency, through corruption, by convincing two of the corporations to rent the official’s completely incompetent adult child.
It’s not just public servants who have been seduced. Courtney also convinced at least two personal citizens that they had decided to participate in secret programs: a pediatric anaesthetist with a side concert as a video producer and, and a representative of personal corporations doing business with the federal government. Courtney posed as a Pentagon official at the meetings and the other pretended to be a CIA contracting agent.
Perhaps at his boldest achievement, Courtney ended the circle by securing a position as a personal contractor at the Information Technology Acquisition and Evaluation Center of the National Institutes of Health (NITAAC). Courtney told NITAAC officials that the CIA chose the company in components to administer the organization’s secret contracts. As a result, Courtney was able to direct contracts to corporations that use it as a component of its “CIA coverage.”
And what a canopy it was. Using a variety of aliases, Courtney created a story for himself that was full of extravagances. He claimed to be a Gulf War veteran, in fact it was his father, who died in an attack on the center in 2012 at the age of 57, who served in the conflict.
Among his most fantastic stories: a “hostile foreign intelligence service” tried to poison him with ricin on a spy mission. In fact, Courtney came closer to running for the CIA in 2006, when he was interviewed for a task and won a conditional offer that expired while remaining in the DEA.
He told corporate officials that they were under surveillance through foreign intelligence agencies and ordered them to block their social media accounts and replace the routes to work. Foreign spies were trying to hurt them, Courtney said, and said some start bringing weapons.
For K.B., the first concept that something was achieved here in the fall of 2012 when I was drawing up a business plan for a cybersecurity company focused on national security issues. K.B., who was still on the payroll for his job as a defense contractor, asked Courtney to review the documents for his new business.
After about a month, Courtney sent good news. He said he wanted to introduce K.B. to Curtin Winsor Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, whom Courtney claimed to know the Freemasons, where he had been active for years. (The Daily Beast saw text messages and emails between Courtney and K.B.)
Winsor was promoting his family circle’s business in West Virginia for nearly $200 million, Courtney said, and had to move the cash to a proper investment for tax purposes. The ambassador, Courtney said, liked the K.B. presentation and sought to invest $1 million in the start-up.
Courtney introduced him to K.B. collect mandatory business documents and records to do business with the federal government and request non-public K.B. information, adding your Social Security number as well as the main points of company management.
“[Then] I picked up the phone and got a phone call with the ambassador,” K.B. said. said The Daily Beast.
Three days later, Courtney texted K.B. with a link to an obituary through Curtin Winsor III, the ambassador’s son, who died suddenly of an attack on the center, but insisted that Major Winsor was still making plans to conclude the investment agreement. Soon after, K.B. he won an email from a Gmail account on behalf of the Ambassador and, in the coming weeks, he and his new investor have reached an email agreement.
Despite the progress, K.B. had a tenacious sense of the situation. Instead of providing a $1 million investment, the ambassador sought to give K.B. a $10 million loan at an interest rate of 1%, which makes no sense to a tax shelter user.
Plus, K.B. and the ambassador had not yet met in person. Winsor explained that he believed in Courtney, and since Freemason regulations prohibited him from giving cash to other members, he thought he would do the next more productive and invest in one of his friends.
Still eager to get his business off the line, K.B. submitted the offer to his lawyers. They did their due diligence, checked Winsor’s background, and didn’t find anything problematic. At the end of December, K.B. had an agreement signed.
“I thought, ‘Okay, that’s great, I think I just funded my business,'” he recalls.
But endless delays followed, as well as a complicated apology: the ambassador’s wife was in the dehydrated hospital; an electronic movement had been reported as a suspect through the Department of Homeland Security; the bank’s president froze the budget because he believed that the ambassador, who was on the board of directors, had embezzled money.
K.b. (9:53:51 AM): Did you contact Curt or just leave a VM?
Garrison Courtney (9:54:14 AM): I spoke to him
K.b. (9:54:44 AM): What do you think
Garrison Courtney (9:55:43): It’s slow. A lot on your plate. He seemed a little depressed. He was concerned about the problems in the Boardroom at Georgetown Bank they were focusing on this week. They tried to turn their child’s circle of relatives into benefits, etc.
At that moment, K.B. said he had given up his daily task before the strike on his own. The cash had not yet reached his account and K.B. have become increasingly anxious. That’s when he found out some other crisis had occurred.
On February 5, Courtney sent K.B. a text indicating that the ambassador’s wife had passed away after a ventilator was removed. The next day, a follow-up email appeared from the widower supposedly in mourning.
Gentlemen
I apologize for the persistent delays. I didn’t expect the cases as they are. I’m late today because I didn’t get home until today. We’re making plans for a service in Puerto Rico for Ann, because that’s where she comes from. I’ll meet the morgue in a little while and advise you on the calendar from that moment on. Again, I apologize for the delay. The surreal word comes to the brain right now.
Dry
After sitting with the news for about a week, K.B. he searched the ambassador’s tactile data online and called Curtin and Ann Winsor’s number in McLean, Virginia. A major answered the phone.
“Is that Ann Winsor?” K.b. Asked.
“Yes, ” she answered.
“Ma’am, I heard her dead, ” K.B. Said.
The ambassador wasn’t home, he was in a bricklayer’s assembly, but he temporarily called K.B. to find out what was going on in the world. K.b. He found out curt Winsor had no idea who he was, had never heard of his business and it wasn’t this Gmail account. In fact, he never promised to lend to K.B. $10 million.
However, the real Winsor knew Garrison Courtney. He had been expelled from the Freemasons last year for unexplained reasons.
It’s unclear why Courtney would have invented this trick, though K.B. He suspected this component of a plan to secretly earn shares in his new company. “And who knows what he’s going to do with it from there, ” he said.
Motivation aside, the episode provided a desirable view of how Courtney rotated to those around her: how when a script collapsed, there was a new one.
K.b. still on the phone with genuine Ambassador Winsor when, coincidentally, Courtney began texting him. I had bad news: Winsor was running away from investing. Don’t worry, however, some other wealthy investor who knew of the freemasons lodge undercover and in a position to leave.
Garrison Courtney (9:08:28): Call me. Jack wants to meet you. He’s going to take his circle of relatives to see Curt. He said if Curt doesn’t act, he’ll lend, but he’d want to be chairman of the board when he left Caci in December. We want to coordinate through his ordinance.
Now, K.B. said, knew none of this was any less true and confronted Courtney. “I said, “You’re a liar, you’re a con man and you’ve been caught. I went to the police [of Fairfax, VA] and gave them all the emails and documents and everything I had.
K.b. waited patiently for a call from the investigators, but never arrived. He said the policemen, who had not responded to a request for comment, had said that, because he had not lost any money, they would not refer the matter to prosecutors. But K.B. felt that he still had a duty to denounce Courtney’s behavior to the government.
Aware that Courtney still had a security clearance, K.B. sent an urgent email to The Facility Security Manager of Defense Group Inc. (DGI), a knowledge analysis contractor who handles the operations of the FBI and the Department of Defense, where Courtney and his company now had a contract.
“I’m worried that if you might eventually cheat and let down my business, what would you do with classified information?” said K.B. Wrote. The IMB security chief promised to take a look at it, but never heard from them again. (The security guard contacted through K.B. has since died and the new DGI owner has not responded to a request for comments).)
K.b. He also sent an email to the Pentagon inspector general, reporting courtney’s “unethical” and “erratic” habit and access to classified information. He said his alert was met with silence.
About a year and a part later, while researching a contract, K.B. He moved through his LinkedIn contacts and discovered that Courtney now runs for Blue Canopy. Without delay, he sent an email to Mike Lee, the retired general, who was a senior executive there; volunteered in the same organization and met in passing.
“General Lee, I hope it’s all for you, ” said K.B. Wrote. “I recently learned that he recently hired one of my former employees. I’d like to give you some context because it can wreak havoc on your business and your reputation. Do you have time to talk?”
The two spoke on the phone and K.B. stated that Lee had asked him to submit any documentation of Courtney’s activities.
The following week, Lee responded and said Blue Canopy dealt with the case “with the utmost seriousness” but rejected the allegations. The general insisted that he and his associates had spoken to Courtney and had come to a very different conclusion. Lee then questioned K.B.’s motives for sounding the alarm and incorrectly warned K.B. possibly even violated a state coverage law by sharing fear about a former worker with a new employer. “This touch presents you and us with a vital responsibility,” Lee wrote.
K.b. stunned by the answer.
Lee, a great reputation in the military community, had been a leader of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and had won the National Intelligence Achievement Medal, the Higher Defense Service Medal and a Bronze Star. K.b. sent him an email explaining that his only goal was to protect national security: a legal responsibility for anyone with a security clearance.
“I’ve shared data with you based on [Courtney’s] paintings on intelligence network paintings and the possibility of exploitation and engagement through an employee,” K.B. Wrote. “You said you were looking for the data to be shared with youArray… What you do with them is up to you.”
“You even told me I had TOP SECRET documents in his notebook,” K.B. said. Additional. “In the Snowden era, we have a legal responsibility to act cautiously. What you do with this data is up to you and your security team. The other similarities between my story and your story are too much to be a coincidence… ‘I’m sick.
Lee, who appears to have compatibility with the description of “Public Official F” in Courtney’s indictment documents, did not respond to requests for comment.
“I told law enforcement and I could just, “This guy is bad news, ” and nobody believed me,” K.B. said. told the Daily Beast. “All flags have been raised, Array … I did everything that was expected and the formula failed.”
On his non-public website, Courtney presented himself as a marketing guru who helps “people and companies build their non-public and professional brand.” Meanwhile, his own life is collapsing.
He and Norine divorced and later had a son with his new girlfriend. I had entrusted him to K.B. Once. about his dissatisfaction.
Garrison Courtney (6:20:14 p.m.): It’s incredibly frustrating to have two kids with two wives and not get married. I feel like a big loser and I never imagined I’d be where I’d be. I am sorry. Ventilation only. Sometimes I love her or I get it drunk and I’ll be upset that she unloads me. Trust yourself and respect who is as close to a friend as I am right now.
His finances were also collapsing. He did not fulfill his loan and car loan, and was evicted from his home for not paying rent, according to public records. In March 2014, he filed for bankruptcy; Records show that he owed $697,157 to his creditors while claiming non-public assets of only $4,823, of which approximately $400 in cash.
His obligations included a $25,000 divorce settlement, $2,500 consistent with the child’s month, of which $35,611 was noticeable, an IRS bill of $11,245, a civil judgment of $119,051 for breach of contract and thousands more dollars on medical bills, auto loans. Students. loans, advertising loans, legal fees and credit card debts.
In July 2014, about a week after Courtney’s debts were settled through the court, an unnamed WordPress appeared, warning others not to get caught up in the so-called “communications ninja.”
“Beware of Garrison Courtney, ” said the online page. “He worked in the U.S. Army and the DEA. He’ll tell you he worked for the highest grades of those agencies. He’ll tell you he knows everyone and everyone owes him favors. He’s a liar, a cheater and a con man. He can tell you stories about how he has cancer and is a disabled veterinarian. He can tell you how he traveled all over the world in secret for the Freemasons. Maybe I’ll tell you he can bring you $100 million in AED and army contracts. »
He concluded: “He’s an intriguing, a con man, a liar. Run before you can a plan to get your money.
The author of the site? An increasingly frustrated K.B., who was now desperate to publicize Courtney.
“Garrison Courtney is the closest I’ve ever been to doing business with a criminal,” K.B. said. Said. “It helps me stay awake at night, so I’m going to ring the bell to make sure no one else is fucked up by him.
It turns out that it caught the attention of Courtney, who tried to use it perversely as a point of promotion.
“After learning of the unnamed denigration tactics directed at him, Garrison Courtney has helped several high-level athletes, officials and business leaders solve their reputation control problems,” says one of his many online biographies.
Even if K.B. ignored, Courtney’s false espionage plan begins to crack. Over time, several executives began to wonder why they had not yet been reimbursed through the CIA, according to documents filed through the Federal Court. Courtney responded by accusing executives of leaking allegedly classified information, threatening that they could be prosecuted or revoked their security clearances. When one of them told Courtney he thought it might be a fraud, Courtney accused him of being an Iranian spy.
After a company began relying more on Courtney in 2015 for payment, he proposed a final hotel plan. (Although not listed in Courtney’s criminal records, the company is known in a similar civil case as Blue Canopy).
According to the lawsuit, Courtney began negotiating a loan with Capefirst Funding, a Virginia-based financial firm, claiming that the U.S. government is about to capture Blue Canopy for alleged crime through senior corporate executives.
Blue Canopy, of course, the company was related to General Lee, who had ignored K.B.’s warnings that Courtney was a bad actor. Now, after Blue Canopy defended him, he slandered him so that he could raise a large sum through a complicated monetary transaction, according to demand.
He reportedly told CapeFirst that the seizure could take place until the federal government pays the company $1.95 million for its paintings on Alpha-214. If Capefirst settled the unpaid bill, he said, the federal government would pay the company $2.5 million through a government contract awarded to a third party, Westfields Holdings LLC.
To sell this idea, Courtney had to look like a secret agent running on a high-level project. The lawsuit says he and Keith, along with a government official known in civil court documents such as Eileen Preisser, the Air Force’s liaison to the NGA, held meetings with Westfields and monetarys at a SCIF NGA in Springfield, Virginia.
The contract, which Courtney allegedly issued to look like an official Pentagon document, was signed at Riverside Research’s Arlington offices, a nonprofit expert group and a government contractor. Courtney did not allow executives to keep a copy because, he said, the company did not have the proper “establishment permit” to buy securely classified documents. The lawsuit says Courtney assured the officer that he would keep the contract on a lock that complied with the proper security protocols. Needless to say, they were all wrong.
On November 5, 2015, Capefirst transferred the cash to a receiver’s account through a lawyer hired through Courtney. Through a series of transfers, Courtney was able to make Blue Canopy that the company had effectively been paid for through the U.S. government. But the $2.5 million salary That Courtney promised Capefirst never came, prosecutors said in court documents.
At one point that year, the government, despite everything, opened an investigation into Courtney. Virgil Keith was talking to the FBI and put an agent in touch with K.B., who sat down for hours of interviews and delivered all his text messages and emails to Courtney. The FBI, the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, the Navy Criminal Investigation Service and the CIA Inspector General, among others, would need to catch Courtney.
K.b. called his FBI touch every few months, hoping the investigation would bear fruit this time.
“Stay checking the news,” the officer told him.
And then, one day, there. On June 11, 2020, Courtney pleaded guilty in federal court to a lace fraud charge, equipped with an ankle monitor and released on $25,000 bail.
Incredibly, or predictably, Courtney would have continued her scam even after being released pending sentencing.
When he was charged, Courtney told the court that he worked for Huntington Ingalls Industries, the nation’s largest shipbuilder in Tampa, Florida. That truth. However, as prosecutors accused in a move filed this month, he overlooked that he hired him under the pseudonym “Baer Pierson.”
In the end, the federal government says, Courtney had told Huntington Ingalls the same line about being deeply undercover for the CIA. It was a “property of a burnt firm,” Courtney insisted, and its policy had been inadvertently destroyed in a failed FBI investigation, prosecutors wrote.
Given his continued involvement in classified government programs, Courtney told Huntington Ingalls that having him on board could result in a large intelligence community contract. In November, prosecutors say, Courtney held a false confidential briefing, tracked the required fake NOA and promised to keep the company’s executives secret.
This spring, prosecutors informed Huntington Ingalls of the fees Courtney faces and he resigned before the company simply fired him. The promised contract would never have materialized and Huntington Ingalls has become the fourteenth company that, according to the government, snouted through Courtney.
But even then, the subterfuge is not yet over.
Once Courtney’s plea deal made headlines, a senior Huntington Ingalls executive was alarmed by other major points revealed in the case. The executive called general service officials to request a confidential briefing, an internal SCIF, to assess the legitimacy of the secret program in which Courtney had participated.
This week, finished, a Huntington Ingalls lawyer’s cell phone rang. The guy at the other end knew himself as Devon Azzamoria of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
Azzamoria said it was convening an assembly for corporate executives to be “read” on a classified program. Don’t do it, Azzamoria reminded the lawyer, not a word of that should be said to anyone. The secret collection would take a position “in McLean,” the appellant said, using an internal shortcut to cia headquarters.
The researchers soon realized that “Azzamoria” probably wasn’t who he claimed to be. No one through that call works at ODNI in the first place, and the call did not come from an ODNI-related number. Instead, the researchers say, the number was traced to an Internet device assigned to Garrison Courtney’s Florida home.
“Courtney’s bragged movements in proceeding to devote his fraud, even after pleading guilty and being reprimanded through the Court, show that there are no detention situations that can protect the network awaiting conviction,” prosecutors said in an August 11 move to charge him. bars until his conviction.
In one move in response, Courtney argued that his movements did not constitute fraud because he had not received cash from the company. He was ready to defy the government’s attempt to revoke his bail, and then suddenly thought again. As a result, he was arrested Wednesday through the U.S. Marshals Service, awaiting a conviction on October 23 in which he faces up to 20 years in prison.
And their legal disorders probably wouldn’t end there. Capefirst Funding, which pitted Courtney $1.95 million to pay Blue Canopy, sued Jacobs Engineering Group, which acquired Blue Canopy in 2017, to recover his cash. Last month, a federal ruling ruled that Jacobs was not guilty of the loss and that Capefirst sued Courtney (and/or Virgil Keith) for the funds.
When The Daily Beast contacted Courtney, his non-public email, his public defender, Stuart Sears, responded on his behalf.
“I’m Mr. Courtney and I’m like you recently contacted him to see if he was interested in discussing his appearance of the matter,” Sears wrote. “Following my advice, you have to reject your offer, but we appreciate that you’re giving it the opportunity.”
Given his experience in government, Courtney knew all too well how to get lost in the endless layers of bureaucracy that exist at the federal level. Although data sharing has advanced since 9/11, there is still a myriad of gaps to be exploited.
“Federal agencies don’t communicate with others,” said McElrath, the former federal investigator who now works as an adviser to the government’s nonprofit oversight task.
“In case they did, he supported it, he had a call that said yes, he is a component of this running group. And that user idea was in the working group because he presented them with a fake document indicating that he
Cedric Leighton, a U.S. Air Force intelligence exophilic. That he helped expand credible identities for secret operators in his military career, said Courtney’s fraud was notable for the giant sums in question and the intensity of the deception.
“This is the first case I know, that of a user who is going to have such a wonderful time to manipulate corporations in this way,” he said.
Back in Montana, Courtney’s theater instructor recalled the moment she learned that her former student had followed her recommendation on how to use her talents.
“As I read my daily dose of news, I found the article about Garrison,” he says. “Honestly, my center started beating faster when I read the main points of your scam. I quit the data process, and then came to the conclusion that, although I would never have predicted this as Garrison’s future, I was not actually surprised. .
K.B., meanwhile, was still confirmed.
He didn’t lose much to Courtney, saving himself a few thousand dollars in legal fees he still hated to pay. Now he’s fine and his business is making money. But if you’re much luckier than those who crossed paths with Courtney, K.B. it wasn’t unharmed.
“I’ve lost the respect of employees, consumers and too much time,” he said. “[Courtney] is very good. He is a professional criminal … I’m glad it got stuck. It’s a shame nothing happened before other people lost $4 and a half a half.”