This Military Contractor Rocks a $100,000 Belt Buckle

David H. Brooks did well enough selling body armor to the military to hire 50 Cent and Aerosmith to play at his daughter’s bat mitzvah. He wore a gem- and diamond-encrusted American flag belt buckle, lest his patriotism come under suspicion. Now he’s on trial for allegedly improperly putting millions on his expense account, for fraud and for insider trading.

New York Times via William Gibson:

DHB, which specialized in making body armor used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, paid for more than $6 million in personal expenses on behalf of Mr. Brooks, covering items as expensive as luxury cars and as prosaic as party invitations, Ms. Schlegel testified.

Also included were university textbooks for his daughter, pornographic videos for his son, plastic surgery for his wife, a burial plot for his mother, prostitutes for his employees, and, for him, a $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds.

The expense-account abuse, the prosecution has said, represented a pittance compared with the $190 million that Mr. Brooks and another top employee are accused of making through a stock fraud scheme in which he falsified information about his company’s performance — including significantly overstating the inventory of bulletproof vests — to inflate the price of the stock before selling his shares in 2004.

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