Pair sentenced in Mideast kickback scheme
Ex-N.M. defense contractor got payoffs for rebuilding projects
A federal judge in Santa Fe sentenced two former officers of a New Mexico-based defense contracting firm for their role in an illegal scheme to solicit and accept kickbacks for wartime reconstruction projects in Iraq and Jordan that the U.S. Attorney’s Office said involved payments of thousands of dollars, luxury cars and watches.
Three foreign nationals also indicted in the scheme, two from Jordan and the other a dual Lebanese-British citizen, have not been arrested and are considered fugitives.
Former defense contracting firm officer Neal Kasper, 68, of Montana was sentenced Tuesday to three years and four months in prison while his wife, Tiffany White, 51, of Texas, was sentenced to one day of imprisonment or timed served. Kasper and White were ordered to forfeit over $400,000 of profits from the crimes, and White was ordered to pay over $33,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.
Kasper and White together with Bradley Christiansen and Sara Christiansen, both of Albuquerque, and four foreign nationals “were charged with conspiring to defraud the United States of more than $5 million through wire fraud in an indictment filed in February 2012,” according to a news release.
The statement said Kasper, White and Bradley Christiansen were officers and employees of Laguna Construction Co. Inc., “a minority disadvantaged business wholly owned by the Pueblo of Laguna,” but were not members of the pueblo. Bradley Christiansen oversaw all of the company’s Iraq reconstruction projects under the supervision of Kasper, according to the news release.
Kasper, White and the Christiansens were also charged with money laundering offenses, and Bradley Christiansen with tax evasion offenses. Kasper and White entered guilty pleas in February 2016. Bradley Christiansen entered a guilty plea in July 2013 and the charges against Sara Christiansen and one of the foreign nationals were dismissed.
Bradley Christiansen pleaded to conspiracy to provide, solicit and accept kickbacks and to solicitation and receipt of kickbacks and tax evasion, and in a plea agreement, admitted to receiving his first kickback in December 2004 through Kasper, who had received a $20,000 kickback and shared half with Bradley Christiansen.
The news release says that Bradley Christiansen said that from January 2005 through February 2009, he and Kasper “received numerous kickbacks from the foreign nationals, which they split 50/50. In addition to approximately $360,000 in monetary kickbacks, Christiansen also admitting to receiving a 2006 Porsche Cayman valued at $65,163, a Ford GT350 Shelby valued at $290,000, several watches valued at an aggregate of $103,800 as kickbacks from the foreign nationals.”
Christiansen also admitted failing to declare the kickback payments and assets he received from the foreign nationals as personal income when filing his federal income tax returns in 2006, 2007 and 2008, and as a result Christiansen evaded approximately $389,413 in federal taxes, the news release states.