WASHINGTON – A former Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force was sentenced yesterday to 40 months in prison for conspiring to and receiving bribes from military contractors in return for the award of Department of Defense contracts during his deployment to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

Patrick W. Boyd, 44, of Gainesville, Fla., was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois. In addition to his prison term, Boyd was sentenced to one year of supervised release and was ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution.

Boyd pleaded guilty in June 2008 to a superseding indictment charging him with three counts of conspiracy to commit bribery and three counts of bribery. According to the superseding indictment and other documents filed in the case, Boyd served as a warranted contracting officer in Afghanistan from September 2004 to January 2005. While serving in Afghanistan, Boyd and his co-conspirators made separate agreements with three military contractors – Naweed Bakhshi Company, Northern Reconstruction Organization and Top’s Construction – to receive $30,000 cash from each company in return for the award of particular contracts. Boyd then awarded contracts for concrete bunkers and barriers and asphalt paving services to the contractors. The contractors each delivered $30,000 to Boyd’s co-conspirators, who divided the bribe monies among themselves and Boyd. Boyd is the eighth defendant sentenced in this investigation. Ten additional defendants remain to be sentenced in the Northern District of Illinois and the District of Hawaii.

On Dec. 6, 2011, Judge Kennelly sentenced former Lieutenant Robert Moore, one of Boyd’s conspirators, to 15 months in prison and one year of supervised release and ordered Moore to pay $120,000 in restitution. In addition to his participation in the corrupt award of contracts in return for money, Moore also conspired to and received bribes for fraudulently verifying the receipt of concrete bunkers and barriers that were, in fact, never delivered to Bagram Airfield. Another conspirator, former Major Christopher West, will be sentenced on Dec. 20, 2011.

In a related case, on Dec. 5, 2011, Judge Kennelly sentenced Sergeant Sheryl Ayeni to one year in prison and one year of supervised release and ordered Ayeni to pay $30,000 in restitution. Ayeni, who served at Bagram Airfield at the same time as Boyd, Moore and West, received approximately $30,000 in bribe money in return for permitting payment of a local Afghan military contractor in U.S. dollars, which is a violation of relevant Department of Defense regulations.

This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Mark W. Pletcher of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section , and investigated by the Army Criminal Investigations Division, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Department of the Air Force, Office of Special Investigations, with assistance from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Source: USDJ