U.S. Uncovers Iraq Bribe Case

The Cockerhams and Blake were charged in a criminal complaint, but a grand jury could issue a formal indictment, perhaps as soon as today, according to sources close to the case. Cockerham's bribery charge alone carries up to a 15-year sentence, according to the Justice Department. The money-laundering and conspiracy charges carry up to 20 years and 5 years, respectively. For now, Blake is free on bond and the Cockerhams are being held at Central Texas Federal Detention Facility in San Antonio. .

The case seems far removed from Castor, La., population 212, where John Cockerham grew up. When Cockerham's parents met, they had five children between them. Together, they had 12 more.

The family squeezed into a four-room house, according to interviews with Cockerham's sister Tammie Griffin of Shreveport and his cousin Carlos Cockerham. His parents slept in one bedroom, the sisters in the other. John and his brothers slept on mattresses in the living room. When it was hot, his sister said, John sometimes put a mattress on top of a car outside to take in summer breezes.

After graduating from high school with a desire to get a college education and see life beyond Castor, family members said, Cockerham enlisted in the Army and eventually found himself working as a dental specialist. Two years later, while stationed at Fort Knox, Ky., he married Melissa Jordan, a soldier from Elizabethtown, Ky.

With an ROTC scholarship, Cockerham earned a bachelor's degree at Northeastern Louisiana University in 1993 and left college as a commissioned officer. By 2004, he had picked up a master's degree in business and procurement and was living in San Antonio.

Cockerham was deployed to Camp Arifjan, near Kuwait City, in June 2004. He worked in a trailer with 27 soldiers and civilians and was given the authority to approve contracts for as much as $10 million. The Iraq war, then into its second year, was expanding contracting needs faster than the military could fully staff offices like the one in Kuwait.

According to court documents, the owner of Trans Orient General Trading in Kuwait allegedly offered Cockerham a bribe for a lucrative contract to supply bottled water. Prosecutors allege that the owner of Trans Orient and another man linked to the company met Cockerham in June in a parking lot of the Kuwaiti military base where he worked. The two men allegedly showed him a briefcase containing $300,000 cash and said it was a "good-faith" payment, with more to follow. Cockerham did not take the cash, but authorities say it was later deposited in a bank account to which Cockerham had access.

A short time later, one of the men approached Cockerham, saying he knew how he could "make some more money" with a different vendor, Green Valley Co. of Kuwait. This was followed by another alleged parking-lot meeting, in which court documents say one of the men showed Cockerham a briefcase with $300,000 in cash. Again, Cockerham didn't take the money but was allegedly told by the man that it would be placed in a U.S. bank account for him.

On Oct. 18, 2004, Cockerham signed a contract with Green Valley.

Blake, his sister, came to Kuwait in the fall of 2004 at Cockerham's suggestion that she could make more money living in Kuwait than she earned as a substitute school teacher and mall security guard just outside Dallas, investigators and Blake's lawyers said.

Robert Wilson, an attorney for Blake, confirmed that she moved to Kuwait, where she worked in sales and marketing for a Kuwaiti telecom company, earning $50,000 a year, and enrolled her two teenagers in private schools.

Also in 2004, Melissa Cockerham went to visit her husband. It was then, according to the U.S. government, that one of the first bribes was paid. While Melissa Cockerham was staying at a hotel in Kuwait, she received a call from her husband saying that someone would pick her up and take her to a bank where she could open an account and a safe-deposit box, according to the Army investigator's affidavit.