Former NSA Contractors Sentenced on Federal Charges for Submitting False Claims for Hours Worked on Government Contract

Baltimore, Maryland – U.S. District Judge Ellen L. Hollander today sentenced Todd Andrew Leasure, age 45, of Orange Beach, Alabama, to six months of home detention as part of five years’ probation, for the federal charge of making false statements in connection with the number of hours he worked on a contract at the National Security Agency (NSA).  Judge Hollander also ordered Leasure to pay restitution of $150,001.

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur; Robert P. Storch, Inspector General of the National Security Agency; and Special Agent in Charge Robert E. Craig, Jr. of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service - Mid-Atlantic Field Office.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is a component of the United States Department of Defense.  Beginning in 2008, the NSA contracted with an outside company (Contractor A) to supply information technology (IT) services to the NSA, including onsite database administrators employed by Contractor A. 

According to his plea agreement, from February 2014 through February 2017, Leasure was employed on a full-time basis by Contractor A to work as a database administrator pursuant to the contract between NSA and Contractor A.  Leasure’s duty station was at a NSA facility located in Linthicum Heights, Maryland, and Leasure regularly traveled from Florida to Maryland to perform his responsibilities under the contract. 

Contractor A required Leasure to submit timesheets in electronic format providing date- and task-specific entries stating the number of hours he had worked on the contract.  Based on those entries, Contractor A periodically invoiced the NSA for the hours that Leasure worked, and NSA paid Contractor A for Leasure’s claimed hours at a rate of $247 to $280 per hour.

Leasure admitted that between February 3, 2014 and February 17, 2017, he submitted, and caused to be submitted, false timesheets to Contractor A in which he claimed to have worked at least 607 hours more than he actually worked on the NSA contract.  As a result, NSA overpaid Contractor A by an amount exceeding $150,000.

In a separate case, on December 6, 2019, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Kyle Duran Smego, age 41, of Raleigh, North Carolina, to serve eight months of home detention as a special condition of three years’ probation, and ordered Smego to pay restitution of $252,527.15.  Smego, who was a subcontractor at two companies where he was assigned to work on contracts at the NSA, previously pleaded guilty to submitting false claims to the government, inflating the number of hours he claimed to have worked on the two contacts by at least 40%.

Anyone with information about fraud at NSA may contact the NSA Office of the Inspector General at https://www.nsa.gov/about/contact-us/OIG-Hotline/.

United States Attorney Robert K. Hur commended the NSA OIG for their work in both investigations and the DOD OIG for its work in the Leasure investigation.  Mr. Hur thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Peter J. Martinez and Jefferson M. Gray, who prosecuted the Leasure and Smego cases, respectively.

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