"Fake it till you make it."

It's tired advice. But Garrison Courtney took it literally.

Garrison was a real former DEA spokesperson. That part was true. Everything else about his life was completely fabricated.

He told at least a dozen companies he was a covert CIA officer running a classified intelligence program. Obviously the program didn't exist, except for maybe in his head. But the money these companies paid him.. that was very real. $4.4 million real.

But how did he get away with this? How did these companies fall for this? You need to understand how government contracting works, and how Courtney twisted the process in his favor. Real intelligence agencies sometimes need "commercial cover". A CIA officer working overseas might officially be employed by a private company. The company provides a plausible reason for the officer to be in a foreign country. This is real. It happens. Garrison exploited this.

He approached defense contractors and technology companies with a proposition. He said “I'm running a classified task force, and I need your company to hire me as an employee. On paper, I'll look like a regular consultant. In reality, I'll be conducting covert intelligence work.”

Garrison told these companies they'd be compensated on the back end. The government would award them contracts, lucrative ones, as repayment for providing his cover. He presented it as a mutually beneficial arrangement. They would be supporting national security, and in exchange they'd be rewarded with future business. Of course the companies did their due diligence. They asked questions and wanted some form of verification. But Garrison was already a step ahead..

This next part shows just how cunning he was.

When companies asked to verify his claims, he pointed them to government officials he had been cultivating over the years. These were real people he met over time from his DEA days, and others he connected with through networking in defense and intelligence circles. These officials didn't know they were part of a con.

Garrison had spent years building relationships and dropping little hints about his "classified work". He never explicitly asked anyone to lie for him. Instead, he created impressions. He created an entire persona. He would mention he was "working on something sensitive" or involved in “interagency matters". When a company later reached out to one of these contacts asking about him, the response was often something vague, but validating enough:

"I know Garrison. He's involved in some classified stuff, but I don’t know the details."

That was enough. The official wasn't confirming anything specific, but to a company trying to do due diligence, it sounded like confirmation.

Garrison also leveraged a fundamental awkwardness around classified information. If someone claims their work is classified, how do you verify it? You can't just call the CIA and ask. There's no public directory of covert programs. The secrecy itself became a shield. And he reinforced that shield constantly.

Garrison held meetings in SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities). These are the rooms where classified briefings happen. They’re mostly windowless, electronically shielded, and access restricted. He would arrange meetings at government facilities or defense contractor offices, claiming the discussion required a classified setting. He'd show up acting like he belonged. The people hosting these meetings assumed someone had vetted him. After all, you don't just walk into a SCIF. Except Courtney did. Repeatedly. By conducting meetings in these spaces, he borrowed their credibility. If we're talking in a SCIF, the thinking goes, this must be real. It was the setting that validated the lie.

Courtney didn't just talk a good game. He created documentation to back it up. He produced fake non-disclosure agreements that companies signed before he'd discuss the "classified program". These NDAs served two purposes. First, they made everything feel official and serious. Second, and more importantly, they prevented companies from talking to each other. Each victim was isolated. No one could compare notes and realize the same "covert CIA officer" was running the same pitch on multiple companies simultaneously.

Garrison also created documents that appeared to carry the signature of the U.S. Attorney General, lending federal authority to his fictional program. The letterhead was right. The signatures looked official. Why would anyone fake something this audacious? When anyone got suspicious, he didn't retreat. He pushed back.

A normal con artist might get defensive or make excuses when questioned. Garrison went on the offensive. He threatened people. If someone pushed too hard on verification, he'd warn them that they were jeopardizing a classified operation. He'd threaten to have their security clearances revoked. He'd suggest they could face criminal prosecution for "leaking classified information" by even asking these questions.

For people whose careers depended on maintaining security clearances, which was most of his targets, these threats were terrifying. A revoked clearance doesn't just end one job. It ends an entire career in the defense and intelligence industry. So people backed off. They stopped asking questions. They convinced themselves that Garrison must be legitimate, because surely no one would be this brazen if they weren't.

Each new company he defrauded bought him time and money. But he also made promises about government contracts that were supposed to materialize. So he needed new marks to pay the old ones and keep the whole thing running. By the time he was arrested, he wasn't just running the $4.4 million scam. Investigators discovered he was actively working to misappropriate over $3.7 billion in federal procurements.

He landed himself a position at the National Institute of Health. This wasn't part of his cover story, it was an actual job that gave him access to sensitive procurement information. He used that access to identify upcoming contracts and tailored his pitches to companies hungry for government business.

House of cards, a web a lies.

So what finally stopped him? How did his house of cards come crumbling down?

Someone FINALLY verified.

After years of successful deception, Garrison encountered people who called his bluff on the threats and didn't take his credentials at face value. They pushed through the discomfort of questioning a "classified program" and discovered there was nothing behind the curtain. Courtney's scheme works as a master class in social engineering, because he understood psychology. People verify claims through trust networks, and trust networks can be manipulated.

Here’s four things he executed perfectly:

Borrowed authority. He used secure facilities, real job titles from his past, and the opacity of classified programs to make his lies feel true. Every true detail made the false ones more believable.

Manufactured validation. He didn't forge references, he cultivated them. Real people vouched for him without realizing what they were vouching for. Due diligence felt satisfied, even though it hadn't verified anything at all.

Weaponized secrecy. The NDAs weren't just legal cover. They isolated each victim. And the classified nature of the supposed program made normal verification feel impossible or even dangerous.

Aggression as defense. When questioned, he aggressively pushed back. This flipped the power dynamic. Suddenly the person asking questions was the one who felt like they'd done something wrong.

In the end, Garrison Courtney was sentenced to 7 years in federal prison. The companies that paid him learned something expensive: confidence isn't clearance. And if someone responds to reasonable questions with threats? That's fear, not authority. Real authority doesn't need intimidation.

This is the kind of story that feels too absurd to be real, until it happens to your company.

So Verify. Verify. Verify.

& dontgetgot.