U.S. Army Soldier Gets Prison for Smuggling Cash

(Fayetteville, North Carolina) According to U.S. Attorney Thomas G. Walker, former U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Tonya Long has been sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring in a kickback scheme to steal and smuggle more than $1 million of military funds out of Afghanistan.

Long was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle in Elizabeth City on charges of bulk cash smuggling and aiding and abetting the smuggling.

According to investigators and the prosecutor, Long was assigned to the 189th Combat Sustainment Battalion attached to the 7th Special Forces Group. During a deployment from January 2008 to April 2009, she was a customs inspector — she inspected personal property of military service members that was being loaded into containers for shipment back to the United States.

Walker's spokesman said Long and a co-conspirator, whose name is being kept secret, took the money in a double-billing kickback scheme. The co-conspirator collected the money and Long helped smuggle it to the United States in her customs inspector role, the spokesman said.[…]

The release from Walker's office says Long smuggled the money out of Afghanistan in videocassette recorders. It says she stripped out the VCRs' components, put the money inside, used her authority as a customs inspector to clear them through customs, and had them shipped to the U.S. in military shipping containers.

Long, aka Tonya Long Keebaugh, was also ordered to pay $1 million in restitution.