How an Unqualified Sex Worker Allegedly Infiltrated a Top Air Force Lab

A senior research scientist working on advanced propulsion technologies for the U.S. Air Force duped a contractor into hiring an unqualified sex worker he had paid using a government charge card because he thought she was “really hot,” according to the feds.

The man then allegedly threatened to kill the sex worker’s supervisor and himself when the scheme fell apart—but not before shifting the bulk of the project’s funding elsewhere to pay for her salary at a different defense firm.

That’s according to a newly unsealed search warrant application obtained by The Daily Beast, which accuses Dr. James Gord, a highly decorated civilian Air Force employee, of installing the 32-year-old sex worker on a highly technical research project even though she did not have a college degree or any expertise in the field.

The woman “did not fully understand how to use basic word processing…software,” and “struggled to formulate coherent interoffice emails,” the warrant states. In 2019, Gord tapped the woman to co-chair a scientific panel for unsuspecting photonics researchers designing turbine engines, detonation engines, scramjets, and rockets.

No charges had yet been filed against Gord prior to his death last September of unspecified causes. The woman, whose identity The Daily Beast is withholding, has not been charged with a crime either, according to court records. She did not respond to voicemails left at a number listed under her name, or to an email seeking comment on Monday.

The warrant says Gord first came to the attention of Air Force investigators in March 2019, after the CEO and chief research scientist of a company that provided the Air Force Research Lab in Ohio with laser imaging for turbine engines reached out with a raft of highly troubling allegations.

The company, Spectral Energies, has received millions of dollars in government contracts and had been contracting for the lab, located on the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, for the past 17 years, the warrant states. Spectral Energies CEO Sukesh Roy and Gord, who oversaw the technology Roy’s company supported and was responsible for doling out the contract’s funding, had become good friends during that period, according to the warrant.