August 25, 2025 – LOS ANGELES, CA – A Navy veteran has been charged with defrauding the Navy out of more than $9 
million through a bid-rigging and contract steering scheme that involved paying kickbacks and other benefits to a co-conspirator, who was a Navy insider at the time, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday, August 20, 2025.
Cory Taylor Wright, 49, of Columbus, Georgia, is charged in a single-count information with wire fraud.
In a separate court filing, Wright agreed to plead guilty to the felony charge, which carries a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. Wright has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors in this matter.
Wright is expected to plead guilty in the coming weeks.
According to his plea agreement, Wright was enlisted in the Navy from February 1997 until his retirement in May 2017. At various points from 2005 to 2017, Wright worked for the Navy’s Mobile Utilities Support Equipment division (Muse), located at the naval base in Port Hueneme in Ventura County. Muse was responsible for providing management, technical, and logistics support for power systems, including large generators, for U.S. Department of Defense operations around the world, including active combat zones.
To accomplish its mission, Muse engaged with prime contractors to procure goods and services, typically by tasking orders to subcontractors.
When Wright neared retirement in late 2016, he and an individual listed in court documents as “Co-Conspirator 1” agreed to create a Georgia-based company, C&C Power Solutions LLC (CCP). Co-Conspirator 1 was a fellow Navy enlistee who ultimately retired from the Navy in 2021 and held various positions at Muse, including supervisory positions that allowed him to exercise considerable influence over naval contracts. The scheme lasted from December 2016 to August 2022.
Wright and Co-Conspirator 1 created the company with the understanding that Co-Conspirator 1 would be a 50% partner in the business once he retired from the Navy. Co-Conspirator 1 told Wright that he would ensure CCP received Navy contracts, including task orders from a prime contractor. In exchange for directing the Navy contracts to CCP, Wright paid Co-Conspirator 1 thousands of dollars in kickback payments and other benefits, including payments to a sporting club operated by Co-Conspirator 1.
To provide initial funding for CCP’s business operations, Co-Conspirator 1 caused a prime contractor and subcontractors to issue payments to CCP for products and services that CCP did not provide. Once CCP was operational, Wright and Co-Conspirator 1 engaged in a bid-rigging scheme to ensure CCP received subcontracts from a prime contractor. For example, in connection with a 2017 task order worth approximately $790,496, Wright and Co-Conspirator 1 caused the submission of multiple fake contract bids that contained estimated project costs that were significantly higher than the bid that CCP submitted.
Wright also generated false and fraudulent invoices that represented CCP had completed work and delivered products to Muse when, in fact, CCP had not completed its contractual obligations. In turn, this caused the prime contractor to submit invoices containing Wright’s false information, causing the Navy to issue payments on the invoices.
Starting in September 2017, Wright and Co-Conspirator 1 conspired to secure CCP as Muse’s next prime contractor, which they knew would be worth tens of millions of dollars to their company. Wright and Co-Conspirator 1 worked together to generate bogus documents – including a fraudulent past performance questionnaire – to obtain the contract. They also hid from the Navy Co-Conspirator 1’s role and financial interest in CCP, including his direct involvement in the company’s successful bid proposal for the prime contract with the Navy.
From the time the Navy awarded CCP this lucrative contact in July 2019 until it terminated three task orders awarded to the company in late 2022 and early 2023, Wright continued to submit false documents, including invoices, to the Navy for obtaining money that his company and he were not entitled to receive.
In total, Wright and his co-schemers defrauded the Navy out of approximately $9,128,515.
The Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are investigating this matter.
Assistant United States Attorneys Ian V. Yanniello of the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section and Thomas F. Rybarczyk of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section are prosecuting this case.
Source: DOJ Release
