An American Navy civilian employee who was drowning in school loan debt but “infatuated” with traveling to Europe allegedly devised a plan to illegally transfer more than $26 million in military contracts to an Italian firm in the hopes that they would recruit her away.
According to a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) search warrant affidavit, mechanical engineer Nicole Kristen Schuster allegedly assisted in rigging bids in favor of a Milan-based supplier of highly specialized vertical lathes and milling machines used to create submarine propellers and other essential parts. It claims that Schuster produced handmade cookies for the Italians on a daily basis in an ongoing effort to “be in [their] good graces” to sweeten the deal.
32-year-old Schuster worked at the Naval Foundry and Propeller Center (NFPC) in Philadelphia from 2015 to 2020 before being transferred to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. Prosecutors claim that she oversaw a number of multimillion dollar projects that supported submarines of the Columbia Class and Virginia Class.
Some of her coworkers described her as “crazy,” but others said she was good at her job. They also told NCIS agents that the Georgia Tech grad was a “compulsive liar” and “manipulator” who frequently “used flirting to get her way,” the affidavit continues, noting that Schuster received a formal warning in 2017 for “offensive, vulgar, and racial comments.”
The affidavit claims that everyone there was “nice to her,” which raises the possibility that Schuster may have been dating one of her Italian coworkers and further muddying the lines of distinction.
“I mean, on the one hand, it’s nice to go to dinner with someone who is cultured and can pick good wine and puts in effort,” Schuster remarked to a coworker in a text message, according to the affidavit. “Like more than any man I’ve ever ‘dated. But on the other, he’s 19 years older than me, lives in Italy, I want a job at [the company], and even now [it] is a conflict of interest”, she added.
According to the affidavit, the exchanges revealed that Schuster was not only divulging confidential information about other companies but also illegally crafting bid requests to coincide with the Italian company’s bids in order to eliminate any chance of a competing supplier succeeding.
Overall, according to the feds, Schuster gave the Italians a “competitive advantage” that led to four contracts between 2017 and 2020 totaling a total of $26,411,587.50. According to public documents and her LinkedIn page, she ultimately never received the post she desired.
Early on Wednesday, Schuster was charged with one count of disclosing contractor bid, proposal, and source information without authorization, a crime punishable by up to five years in jail.
