YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea — A U.S. Army colonel who formerly headed contracting here was sentenced Monday to 4½ years in prison for accepting $900,000 in bribes from South Korean construction companies, according to the Department of Justice.
Col. Richard J. Moran, 56, a Maine native, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Calif., according to information published by the DOJ. He pleaded guilty in January to two counts of conspiracy and one count of bribery, DOJ stated.
As commander of Contracting Command Korea, Moran oversaw 140 people and 17,000 contracts worth more than $310 million annually.
The officer had a “stellar military record” but his bribery schemes made him a “profound disappointment to society,” U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler stated in the DOJ news release.
Moran, a 25-year Army veteran, was reassigned to the Los Alamitos Army Airfield in southern California after his arrest in South Korea.
His wife, Gina Cha Moran, 44, was sentenced Monday to two years of probation. She pleaded guilty in January to one count of making a false statement.
When Army Criminal Investigation Command agents raided the Morans’ Yongsan post home in January 2002, they found more than $700,000 in cash. The money came from two South Korean companies — Aulson and Sky Construction Company Ltd. and IBS Industries Company Ltd. — in exchange for favoritism, according to the DOJ.
A third person, Joseph Kang Hur, was sentenced to 10 months in prison for one count of bribery. An indictment alleged he helped collect bribes and deliver them to Moran. Hur, 57, of Anaheim Hills, Calif., pleaded guilty to the charge.
Ronald Adair Parrish, 49, was convicted of violations of the Procurement Integrity Act, which prohibits the release of contractor bid information. Parrish was chief of the Contract Support Division for CCK.
Richard Lee Carlisle, a 31-year-old Harrison County, Ind., businessman, was convicted of violating the same act. The court found he benefited from the release of confidential bid information for providing computer services to the base.
Parrish and Carlisle are to be sentenced July 21.
