An active-duty U.S. Navy commander pleaded guilty today in
connection with his efforts to obstruct a federal criminal investigation of the
owner and chief executive officer of a multi-national defense contracting firm
headquartered in Singapore.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the
Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Acting U.S. Attorney Alana Robinson of
the Southern District of California, Director Dermot O’Reilly of the Department
of Defense’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) and Director Andrew
Traver of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) made the
announcement.
Bobby Pitts, 48, of Chesapeake, Va., pleaded guilty to one
count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. in connection with the NCIS’s
investigation of Leonard Glenn Francis, the owner and CEO of Glenn Defense
Marine Asia (GDMA). Pitts is set to be
sentenced on December 1, by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernard Skomal of the
Southern District of California, who accepted his plea today.
According to admissions made as part of his plea agreement,
from August 2009 to May 2011, Pitts served as the officer in charge of the U.S.
Navy’s Fleet Industrial Supply Command (FISC) in Singapore. As part of his duties, Pitts learned that
NCIS and several civilian employees of the U.S. Navy were investigating whether
Francis was over-billing the U.S. Navy on ship husbanding contracts. Pitts had access to internal U.S. Navy
documents pertaining to investigative steps that the U.S. Navy was considering
and admitted that he shared this information with Francis, with the intent to
impede and obstruct the U.S. Navy’s oversight of its contracts with GDMA. On Nov. 23, 2010, for example, Pitts
forwarded to a representative of GDMA an internal U.S. Navy email discussing
FISC’s intention to contact officials with the Royal Thai Navy to determine
whether GDMA had been billing the U.S. Navy for services in fact rendered by
the Thai government.
In pleading guilty, Pitts admitted, among other things, to
working with Francis and other foreign-defense-contractor personnel to help
them cover up GDMA’s overcharging practices with respect to providing
protection to U.S. Navy forces deployed in the Western Pacific.
So far, 18 of 27 defendants charged in the U.S. Navy bribery
and fraud scandal have pleaded guilty.
All defendants are presumed innocent unless and until convicted beyond a
reasonable doubt in a court of law.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant Chief Brian R.
Young of the Fraud Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mark W. Pletcher and Patrick Hovakimian of the
Southern District of California.
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