Facility Group chairman and chief executive Robert Moultrie, of Smyrna, Georgia, plead guilty on Monday before Chief Judge Michael P. Mills in the Oxford Federal Courthouse for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. In pleading guilty, Moultrie admitted giving $25,000 to an elected official "to influence and reward the public official" for the state hiring the company.

Two other executives of the Facility Group - Nixon Cawood, Jr. and Charles Morehead - were charged along with Moultrie in a 16-count indictment in June. The indictment alleges they submitted invoices for work not performed and fraudulently inflated prices for the company, which was hired in 2003 to help design and manage construction of the Mississippi Beef Processors plant in Oakland, Mississippi. The facility, a 140,000-square-foot enclosure, closed in 2004, only three months after it opened. Nearly 400 people lost their jobs as a result of the plant closing.  Mississippi taxpayers were left paying $55 million in state-backed loans.

Cawood and Morehead are set for trial on August 25th.