Gregory Courtney, now a Jackson, Miss., resident, entered the plea in federal court nine years after he became the silent head of Mercury Equipment Co., a company that sold and maintained offshore oil rig containers and entered into a contract with Shell.
As an engineer for Shell Deepwater Development Inc. who approved offshore expenditures, Gregory, among other duties, green lighted the MES contract and collected invoices paid by Shell. Courtney admitted he diverted more than $1 million to his personal use from the Mercury maintenance contract, according to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten.
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“Although multiple invoices were submitted to Shell by MES, little if any maintenance of any type was ever performed on the pallet boxes,” Letten said. “Rather, the inspection contract was a scheme and artifice to defraud Shell.”
Courtney, who kept his “control” of MES secret from Shell officials, also kept the income secret from the federal government, Letten said. In the early 2000s, he failed to report more than $800,000 in income tax and committed similar crimes in subsequent years, he admitted during the plea.
Courtney faces up to 25 years in prison and a maximum fine of $350,000 when sentenced May 6. He pleaded guilty to U.S. district Judge Kurt D. Englehardt Tuesday.
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