Tampa Man Who Posed As Covert CIA Operative Sentenced In $4M Scam

TAMPA, FL — In a ruse that could have been scripted for a Hollywood film, the former spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration was sentenced to seven years in prison for scamming a dozen companies out of more than $4.4 million by posing as a covert CIA operative.

Senior U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady sentenced Garrison Kenneth Courtney, 44, of Tampa to prison after he pleaded guilty of claiming to be a covert officer of the CIA involved in a highly classified task force with the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense who convinced private companies to put him on their books as an employee to provide cover for the fake task force.

In truth, Courtney never worked for the CIA and the task force didn't exist.

“The fraud committed by Garrison Courtney harmed the U.S. intelligence community, individual contractors and private companies working hard to protect our nation,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt. “By claiming to be a covert CIA officer involved in a bogus classified task force, Courtney defrauded his victims out of over $4.4 million. But his elaborate scheme could have caused far more damage if the Department of Justice and our investigative partners had not successfully intervened.”

“Courtney – along with his five aliases – will now spend the next seven years in federal prison for his deceitful and felonious criminal conduct,” said U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger.

“Courtney’s brazen and salacious fraud was centered on the lie that he was involved in a highly classified intelligence program, and that he was a covert CIA officer engaged in significant national security work," Terwilliger said. "In fact, Courtney never worked for the CIA, the supposed classified program did not exist, and Courtney invented the elaborate lie to cheat his victims out of over $4.4 million."

Terwilliger commended investigators and the prosecution for "their extraordinary efforts in untangling this complex fraud."

According to court records, to perpetrate the fraud, Courtney approached more than a dozen private companies with some variation of a false story in which he claimed the companies needed to hire and pay him to create what Courtney described as “commercial cover” to mask his supposed affiliation with the CIA.

Courtney claimed that the companies would be reimbursed in the future for his salary payments, at times promising lucrative contracts from the United States government for cooperating in the covert operation.

In court affidavits, investigators said Courtney went to extraordinary lengths to perpetuate the illusion that he was a deep-cover operative:

• He falsely claimed that his identity and large portions of his conduct were classified.
• He directed victims and witnesses to sign fake nondisclosure agreements from the U.S. government forbidding them from speaking about the "classified program."
• He told victims and witnesses that they were under surveillance by hostile foreign intelligence services.
• He made a show of searching people for electronic devices as part of his supposed counterintelligence methods.
• He demanded that his victims meet in secret facilities to create the illusion that they were participating in a classified intelligence operation.
• He repeatedly threatened anyone who questioned his legitimacy with revocation of their security clearance and criminal prosecution if they “leaked” or look into his story.
• Courtney further created fake letters purporting to have been issued by the Attorney General of the United States, which claimed to grant blanket immunity to those who participated in the classified program.
• He created a fraudulent backstory, claiming that he had served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War, had hundreds of confirmed kills while in combat, sustained lung injuries from smoke caused by fires set to Iraq’s oil fields, and that a hostile foreign intelligence service had attempted to assassinate him by poisoning him with ricin. All of these claims were false.

Courtney convinced several real governmental officials that he was participating in this covert task force, telling them they'd been selected to participate in the program. He then used those officials as unwitting props to burnish his legitimacy. He had his victims speak with these public officials to verify his claims, and separately instructed the government officials as to exactly what to say.

By doing this, Courtney created the false appearance that the government officials had independently validated his story when, in fact, the officials were echoing the false information that Courtney fed to them.

At times, Courtney also convinced these officials to meet with victims inside secure government facilities, furthering the appearance of authenticity.

“Courtney wove an expansive web of lies by posing as a covert CIA officer working on a classified program. Courtney’s brazen scheme and manipulation was fueled by his own greed, all while invoking the secrecy of national security to hide his lies,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D’Antuono.

During the scheme, Courtney also fraudulently gained a position working as a private contractor for the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center, which provides acquisition support services to federal agencies, according to investigators.

Once he had installed himself at the NITAAC, Courtney gained access to sensitive information regarding contracts federal agencies had with private companies. He then used the information to attempt to corrupt the procurement process by steering the awarding of contracts to companies where he was on the payroll. Investigators said he used the pretext of national security concerns to warp the process by preventing full and open competition.

When law enforcement caught onto his scheme, Courtney attempted to corrupt more than $3.7 billion in federal procurement processes.

Courtney also used the power of the government to protect his scheme and to attempt to stop the investigation by law enforcement.

Among other things, Courtney talked a public official into trying to prevent a private company from responding to a grand jury subpoena. He also convinced a civilian attorney with the Air Force to contact one of the prosecutors on the case to try to freeze the investigation. Additionally, he had a public official threaten FBI agents investigating the case and told victims who questioned his legitimacy that they were about to be arrested by the FBI for leaking classified information.

Investigators said he tried to divert attention away from himself by using unwitting public officials to feed the names of innocent witnesses to the FBI who supposedly leaked classified information.

He also had real public officials issue and sign a “classification guide” for his bogus program.

“In a scheme that sounds like something out of the movies, this adept con artist hid behind a veil of phony classified programs, concocted a fake identity for himself as a government spy and duped unsuspecting victims out of millions of dollars – all in the name of the U.S. government," said Stanley A. Newell, special agent in charged for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

In 2004, Courtney worked as a legislative assistant for U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Florida) before becoming chief of public affairs for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington, D.C., from 2005 to 2009.

Prior to that, he worked as a reporter for several CBS affiliates in Montana and Oregon. After leaving the DEA, he worked as a producer for entertainment news channel TMZ. At the time of his arrest this year, he was working for Huntington Ingalls Industries in Tampa under the alias Baer Pierson.

See related story: Ex-Tampa DEA Spokesman Pleads Guilty Of Posing As CIA Operative