Former NASA Chief of Staff Begins 41-month Jail Term

Space News  -  February 3, 2011

Former NASA chief of staff Courtney Stadd is due to report Feb. 4 to a federal correctional institute in Morgantown, W.V., to begin serving a 41-month sentence for a conspiracy conviction.

Stadd, 55, of Bethesda, Md., was convicted in federal court last August and sentenced in November for conspiring with Liam Sarsfield, then NASA's deputy engineer of programs, to steer money to his consulting firm and submitting false invoices. Sarsfield was separately convicted on a conflict of interest charge and sentenced last September to three years probation….

Stadd, NASA's chief of staff from 2001 to 2003, was convicted and sentenced in 2009 to six months of house arrest for breaking government ethics laws in directing $10 million in NASA funds to Mississippi State University. The school was one of Stadd's consulting clients between his stints at NASA; he briefly returned to the agency in mid-2005 to help with a reorganization under then-NASA Administrator Mike Griffin..

Following his 2009 conviction, Stadd was indicted for conspiring with Sarsfield to steer a $600,000 NASA remote sensing study contract to Mississippi State, which subcontracted $450,000 of the funds to Stadd and Sarsfield…

In his Feb. 1 e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by Space News, Stadd said he was driven by financial devastation and emotional turmoil to very reluctantly plead guilty.

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/02/04/nasa-official-courtney-stadd-heads-jail/