Ex-NASA chief of staff sentenced to 41 months in prison
Courtney Stadd directed a $600,000 contract to a university that subcontracted with his consulting firm.
A former NASA chief of staff has been sentenced to nearly three-and-a-half years in federal prison for steering a $600,000 sole-source contract to one of his largest consulting clients and then pocketing nearly half those funds.
A U.S. district judge in Gulfport, Miss., on Nov. 18 sentenced Courtney A. Stadd, 55, of Bethesda, Md., to 41 months behind bars followed by three years of supervised release. Stadd also must pay a $7,500 fine and $287,000 in restitution to NASA.
The former chief of staff in December 2009 was charged in a nine-count indictment and at the time faced 55 years in prison if convicted on all charges. This August, he pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge.
Stadd first joined the space agency as President George W. Bush's NASA transition chief in 2000 and served as its chief of staff and White House liaison from 2001 to 2003. He returned in 2005 to assist with an agency reorganization effort, during which time he conspired with Liam Sarsfield, NASA's deputy chief engineer of programs, to direct a $600,000 contract to Mississippi State University. The school later subcontracted $450,000 to Capitol Solutions, Stadd's management consulting firm. Sarsfield later left NASA and went to work for the consulting firm on the same subcontract.
Sarsfield pleaded guilty to one count of committing an act affecting his personal financial interest and was sentenced in September to three years' probation and directed to pay a $5,000 fine and $87,752 in restitution to NASA.