Former Marine pleads guilty to accepting $25,000 bribe for contracts to Lebanese-based company

Former Marine pleads guilty to accepting bribes

WASHINGTON — A former Marine has pleaded guilty to accepting a $25,000 bribe in exchange for awarding numerous contracts to a Lebanon-based company at Camp Fallujah in Iraq.

Mariam Mendoza Steinbuch, who was a staff sergeant deployed as a contracting specialist in 2006, was arraigned Tuesday in federal court in Washington.

Court documents say that after Mendoza returned to the United States in February 2007, she flew from San Diego to Houston Hobby Airport and picked up $25,000 cash from an official with a Houston-based affiliate of the company.

Court filings do not disclose the name of the company or the value of the contracts it was awarded in the scheme.

The documents say Mendoza must turn over two all-terrain vehicles she bought with the bribe money.

(This version corrects spelling of Fallujah.)