A U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracting officer and three executives for companies involved in USAID contracts pleaded guilty to a bribery scheme involving 14 different contracts, totaling $550 million over 10 years.
USAID Official and Three Corporate Executives Plead Guilty to Decade-Long Bribery Scheme Involving Over $550 Million in Contracts; Two Companies Admit Criminal Liability for Bribery Scheme and Securities Fraudhttps://t.co/dOvZlhbc3Y
— Criminal Division (@DOJCrimDiv) June 13, 2025
The elegance of their scheme is, at the same time, both appallingly simple and brilliantly conceived.
The Department of Justice posted the charges.
Roderick Watson, 57, of Woodstock, Maryland, who worked as a USAID contracting officer, pleaded guilty to bribery of a public official;
Walter Barnes, 46, of Potomac, Maryland, who was the owner and president of PM Consulting Group LLC doing business as Vistant (Vistant), a certified small business under the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) 8(a) contracting program, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official and securities fraud;
Darryl Britt, 64, of Myakka City, Florida, who was the owner and president of Apprio, Inc. (Apprio), a certified small business under the SBA 8(a) contracting program, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official; and
Paul Young, 62, of Columbia, Maryland, who was the president of a subcontractor to Vistant and Apprio, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official.
The two companies involved, Apprio and Vistant, agreed to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) for three years, where they admit their guilt and "require each company to, among other obligations, provide ongoing cooperation with and disclosures to the Justice Department, implement a compliance and ethics program, and report to Justice Department regarding remediation and implementation of these compliance measures," the Justice Department said in its news release.
The denial of the international aid community is incredible. Here's Mary Svenstrup of the Center For Global Development.
But the vast majority of US foreign assistance doesn’t involve flying in pallets of dollar bills to pay for food and medicines and, as the Afghanistan case also illustrates, US assistance comes in for considerable oversight and control. That includes the Offices of the Inspectors General, the Office of Management and Budget, the Government Accountability Office, the Office of the Director of Foreign Assistance, the Special Inspector Generals, the 1,977-page Federal Acquisition Regulations, regulatory controls over overhead rates, Congressional oversight committees, and the 450-page Foreign Assistance Act.
All that "oversight," and half a billion dollars walked out the door as easily as pie. They have no clue.
Roderick Watson, the admitted mastermind of the scheme, "received bribes worth about $1 million, including cash, laptops, thousands of dollars in tickets to a suite at an NBA game, a country club wedding, downpayments [sic] on two residential mortgages, cellular phones, and jobs for relatives,” according to the DOJ.
In exchange for the bribes, Watson manipulated the contract process so that it favored Barnes and Britt. Simple, elegant, and totally beyond the layers and layers of "oversight" set up by the government to oversee the contract process.
Barnes, Watson and Britt were also found to have fraudulently induced firms to commit to certain business agreements while they omitted to disclose the bribery scheme, according to court documents. Britt, Barnes and Young all pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe a public official while Barnes additionally admitted to securities fraud.
Watson faces up to 15 years behind bars, while Barnes, Britt and Young each face up to five years, the DOJ said.
Both Barnes’s and Britt’s companies admitted involvement in the bribery scheme. They agreed to cooperate with the DOJ, adopt specified compliance measures and report how they are implementing them and other obligations.
If this kind of thing sounds familiar, it should. COVID aid fraud might eventually top $1 trillion, which is about 20% of the total amount Congress authorized for COVID relief. It represents the most gargantuan failure in the history of government. Most of it was avoidable, such as prisoners calling the unemployment office from jail to receive benefits.
No bureaucrat has been held accountable for this massive waste that largely could have been avoided. Indeed, not much effort has been made to find and prosecute the culprits by either party. There have been hearings and the media publishes the occasional story about thousands of dollars stolen.
But we're looking at $1 trillion (most of it borrowed, of course) being lost and stolen by everyone from the prisoners as mentioned above to organized East European crime organizations. It was open season on the taxpayers and Congress, the bureaucracy, and Joe Biden did very little to stop it.
