FORMER DEA HEAD OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS CHARGED WITH SCAMMING

A former head of public affairs for the Drug Enforcement Administration who later worked as a producer for TMZ has admitted to a fraud scheme that involved posing as an undercover CIA operative in order to swindle government contractors out of over $4 million.

Details of the complex scam carried out by Garrison Courtney, 44, became public Thursday morning as he pleaded guilty to a felony wire fraud charge in Alexandria, Va., before U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady.

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In the scheme, Courtney informed various businesses that the CIA or other agencies needed to place individuals on the companies’ payroll as part of an undercover operation — an arrangement sometimes referred to as commercial cover — O’Grady explained as he read from an agreed statement of facts in the case.

Courtney told the firms the program involved a “task force” set up by the president, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence, according to the judge. Courtney even drafted fake letters from the attorney general claiming those involved in the operation had legal immunity from prosecution, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria.

In fact, Courtney had no position at the CIA and the covert operation he was purporting to support did not exist. He did, however, manage to convince several real government officials that they had also been asked to take part in the nonexistent program.

“The offense involved a misrepresentation that you were acting on behalf of a government agency,” O’Grady said.

Courtney faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the wire fraud charge, but sentences are typically shorter in accordance with nonbinding federal sentencing guidelines. O’Grady released Courtney on his own recognizance and set sentencing for Oct. 23.

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Courtney has had a series of somewhat prominent roles in Washington and elsewhere.

Prior to serving in an acting capacity as DEA’s chief spokesman about a decade ago, he worked as a local TV reporter, as a congressional liaison for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and as communications director on Capitol Hill for Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.). After leaving the DEA, he also worked for a time as a producer for the celebrity news outlet TMZ and appears to have had stints with several defense contractors including Aderas and Blue Canopy.

Through the scheme, he managed to get a private contractor job located at the National Institutes for Health’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Through that position at NIH, he was able to get “sensitive, non-public information” about procurements at various government agencies and steer those contracts to companies he was working with, prosecutors said.

The charges in the case say Courtney’s fraud spanned at least four years, from 2012 to 2016.

Prosecutors declined to comment on how the scheme came to light, but court pleadings indicate that some of the firms involved became impatient when payment from the CIA was not forthcoming.

Courtney responded to such suspicion by turning on those who were raising doubts and accusing them of being spies or having leaked classified information, court papers say. Courtney then threatened to revoke the contracts, cancel security clearances or refer the cases for criminal prosecution, according to the documents. The threats helped “to deflect suspicion away from his fraud,” a court filing said.