Mr. Pressley participated in a wide-ranging scheme to steer U.S. Army contracts to particular providers in exchange for personal, illegal profit,” said Assistant Attorney General Breuer. “Taking in nearly $3 million, he enlisted his wife to help him conceal the nature of his bribes and created phony paperwork to keep the scheme going. This sentence sends the message loud and clear that we will not tolerate corruption of any kind, and are determined to hold corrupt officials accountable.”
“This contracting scheme was driven by greed and is in no way representative of the vast majority of public officials and government contractors who work hard to serve our military,” said James McJunkin, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. “The FBI will continue to investigate contracting fraud which deprives the U.S. government of taxpayer dollars, regardless of where it occurs.”
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Evidence presented at trial showed that Eddie Pressley took various actions to benefit certain contractors who paid him bribes, including Terry Hall. Pressley served as a U.S. Army contracting official at Camp Arifjan between 2004 and 2005. From spring 2004 through fall 2007, Hall operated and had an interest in several companies, including Freedom Consulting and Catering Co. and Total Government Allegiance. In February 2005, Eddie Pressley arranged for Hall to obtain a blanket purchase agreement (BPA) to deliver goods and services to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and its components in Kuwait and elsewhere.
A BPA is a type of contract by which the DoD agrees to pay a contractor a specified price for a particular good or service. Based on a BPA, the DoD orders the supplies on an as-needed basis. The contractor is then obligated to deliver the supplies ordered at the price agreed upon in the BPA. The term for such an order by the DoD is a “call.”
According to Hall’s testimony and other evidence presented at trial, Pressley demanded a $50,000 bribe before he would issue bottled water calls to Hall. Hall testified that in April 2005, he and his associates arranged for Pressley to receive the money in a bank account established in the name of a shell company, EGP Business Solutions Inc.
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