CHESAPEAKE, Va. - A Chesapeake man is waiting to find out his sentence after pleading guilty to stealing from the U.S. military while working as a contractor in Afghanistan.
Court documents stated that while working in Afghanistan as a contractor, 43-year-old Larry Green was in charge of the maintenance and safeguarding of things like cars, cranes and generators.
His unnamed company based out of Texas had a contract with the Army.
Green pleaded guilty to working with others who are not identified in court documents to steal and sell equipment on the base. Court documents stated a 40 foot refrigerator, three generators, and a Toyota cargo truck were stolen. He also admitted to stealing several vehicles, tools, engines, transmissions, and trailer from his company while overseas.
The records said it went on for four months in 2015.
Records indicated there was over $100,000 worth of items taken.
Click here to read the entire court document.
“He was really thinking big and he was he was just taking the big expensive things off their base and selling it,” said Don Mann, a retired Navy SEAL who served for over 20 years. He is also an author and motivational speaker.
Mann said over the last 20 years safeguard systems to prevent theft from happening have improved, but unfortunately this has been a problem.
“Green also admitted that, in order to effectuate the theft of generators, he aided and abetted one of his co-conspirators, a security badging and escort pass supervisor, in creating false official documents to facilitate both the entry of unknown and unvetted Afghan nationals and their vehicles on to the military installation, and the removal of the stolen property from the installation,” according to a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Federal prosecutors say Green falsified documents to deceive security officers and gate guards to transport the stolen goods off based which compromised the security of U.S. military and civilian personnel on the base.
Mann said this put every person on the base in danger and said authorities should investigate to make sure this can’t happen again.
“If this guy was doing this and he got caught, maybe there's others doing it. How can we tighten up the system a little bit more?,” said Mann, “Maybe the authorities over there can figure out how can we prevent that from happening again. That's the only good thing that came out of this.”
Green is scheduled to be sentenced November 19. Attempts to reach him and his attorney were not successful.
