Christopher McCray, Accepting Kickbacks, Georgia 2018

A former employee of a U.S. government contractor in Afghanistan has been sentenced to federal prison for accepting illegal kickbacks from an Afghan subcontractor.

Christopher McCray, 55, of Jonesboro, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee, was sentenced in Atlanta by U.S. District Judge Mark H. Cohen of the Northern District of Georgia to five months in federal prison, with five months home detention, three years of supervised release, and 200 hours of community service.

McCray pleaded guilty to one count of accepting illegal kickbacks on March 5, 2018. He was charged in an indictment filed on April 25, 2017 in the Northern District of Georgia with one count of conspiracy to accept kickbacks and 14 counts of accepting illegal kickbacks.

As part of his plea, McCray admitted that he was employed as the country manager for a subcontractor of an American company that was moving cargo for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service from Bagram Airfield to military bases through Afghanistan.

McCray had the chance to influence the choice of the necessary Afghan trucking company as a subcontractor to his employer. McCray's employer entered into a subcontract with an Afghan company but before the choice of the subcontractor was made, the Afghan trucking company secretly agreed to kick back to McCray 15 percent of the revenues it would receive on the contract, he admitted.

The secret payments were received from December 2012 to May 2014. McCray and the Afghan trucking company also maintained a separate set of invoices, which showed the amounts charged to McCray's employer and the amounts kept by the Afghan company and the amounts sent to McCray.

McCray was first paid in cash, then by wires sent to his bank in Atlanta and then by Western Union payments sent to his mother, who would deposit the funds, mostly in cash, into McCray's bank accounts.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/former-employee-us-government-contractor-afghanistan-sentenced-federal-prison-accepting