A Mississippi native and a Florida man employed by a large national trucking company were sentenced to prison for bribing officials at the Logistics Base in Albany, Georgia. Their goal was to obtain lucrative freight-hauling business, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
David R. Nelson, 55, of Lucedale and Ivan Dwight Brannan, 61, of Jupiter, Florida, were sentenced to 24 months and 48 months in prison, respectively, by U.S. District Judge W. Louis Sands of the Middle District of Georgia.
Nelson entered a guilty plea to the charge in 2014, admitting to paying more than $100,000 in bribes between 2006 and 2012 to officials in the traffic office at MCLB-Albany. The bribes started at $500 for each shipment but later grew to as much as $1,500 per shipment. From the money he made from these freight shipments, Nelson purchased a $50,000 specially modified trailer that allowed him to carry multiple Protected Security Service loads on a single trip.
Brannan pleaded guilty in February.
Sands also ordered each man to serve three years of supervised release. Nelson additionally was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine, and Brannan was ordered to forfeit $120,000.
In connection with their guilty pleas, Nelson, the former driver, and Brannan, the former agent, admitted that from 2006 to 2012, they provided cash and other items of value to Mitchell Potts, a former traffic office supervisor for theDefense Logistics Agency at MCLB-Albany, and Jeffrey Philpot, another official in the DLA traffic office, to ensure that their trucking company client was awarded millions of dollars in business at MCLB-Albany. From 2006 to 2012, Nelson and Brannan paid at least $120,000 in bribes to Potts and Philpot.
Potts and Philpot both previously pleaded guilty to two counts of bribery of a public official for their roles in this scheme and another similar one. Potts and Philpot were previously sentenced to 10 years and seven years in prison, respectively.
The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service investigated the case. Attorney John Keller of the Criminal Divisions Public Integrity Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney K. Alan Dasher prosecuted the case.
