Navy Supply Officer Pleads Guilty to Embezzling $2.7 Million
By Debbie Gregory.
A high-stakes gambling addiction that resulted in the embezzlement of $2.7 million from the federal government has landed a 27-year Naval officer in prison.
Navy Lt. Randolph Prince, 45, will serve more than four years in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and making a false statement on his 2014 tax return.
As a supply staff member of Explosive Ordinance Disposal Training and Evaluation Unit 2, Prince steered government contracts to three sham companies that were run by his friends and co-conspirators Lt. J.G. Courtney Cloman, a naval flight officer, and Clayton Pressley III, a former sailor. Both have pleaded guilty to participating in the fraud.
Effective and efficient procurement for an organization as large and complex as the U.S. military is notoriously difficult. The needs of the nation’s military must be balanced with effective accounting methods, controlling cost, as well as mitigating fraud and waste.
This particular scam operated as follows: When a contract landed on the desk of one of these companies, Prince, and his co-conspirators would generate fraudulent documentation to suggest the company had honored its end of the bargain. Once “delivered” the Navy would then pay the invoice. However, the sham companies never provided the Navy with anything, least of all the “inert training aids,” or fake bombs that were supposedly delivered.
“It’s a shame that he squandered an otherwise outstanding 27-year Naval career,” defense attorney Shawn Cline said in an email. “He suffered from a terrible gambling addiction and abused a position of trust to fuel that addiction.”
In addition to the prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar ordered Prince to pay $2,719,907 in restitution.
Pressley, who netted more than $644,000 from the conspiracy, was sentenced last year to two years in prison. That is on top of four years and two months he received for stealing the identities of his subordinates in an unrelated federal case.
Cloman is set to be sentenced Feb. 7.
