A woman who falsely claimed she had cancer murdered her husband with a fatal dose of insulin to cover up a Ponzi scheme inspired by the movie War Dogs.
In the 2016 movie, Jonah Hill and Miles Teller play two amateur arms dealers who take advantage of a government initiative to bid on contracts with the Pentagon despite their lack of experience in the field.
Less than a year after the film's release, prosecutors say Natalie Cochran, 44, quit her job as a pharmacist and launched her version of the scheme.
Along with her husband, Michael, the couple from Beckley, West Virginia, registered a new company called Tactical Solutions Group. Cochran even made her employees watch War Dogs as an onboarding video, an investor told ABC’s 20/20 last month.
The company was supposed to bid on contracts to sell weapons and other goods to the federal government, though neither Cochran had experience in arms dealing or government contracts.
To investors – and even Cochran’s husband of 19 years – the new business was thriving. But Tactical Solutions Group turned out to be a ruse, as there were never any government contracts and Cochran’s Ponzi scheme swindled the couple’s friends and family out of millions of dollars.
Then the scheme took an ever darker turn when Michael Cochran, 38, died unexpectedly in February 2019, with forensic experts concluding he had been poisoned with a fatal dose of insulin.
Cochran claimed her husband had injected the hormone as part of his bodybuilding efforts, while prosecutors stated that Michael Cochran’s killing was an attempt to conceal her crimes.
On January 29, 2025, she was found guilty of first-degree murder of Michael Cochran and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In a final blow, the judge who presided over Cochran’s murder trial denied her request for an acquittal during a post-trial hearing in Raleigh County Circuit Court last Tuesday.
Prosecutors say that the Cochrans indulged in a luxury lifestyle, securing about $2.5 million from at least 11 people on the promise of high-return investments after setting up in June 2017.
According to the Southern District of West Virginia's Attorney's Office, the money was put into personal bank accounts and spent on three homes, jewelry, lavish holidays, and several vehicles, including a 1965 Shelby Cobra.
On an application for a $100,000 loan from a local bank, the couple stated their business assets exceeded $500 million, according to ABC News.
“We just thought they were doing so good that we were so proud of them,” Donna Bolt, Michael Cochran's mother, told the outlet.
Bolt said that she had invested almost $250,000 with Tactical Solutions Group over a two-and-a-half-year period.
As 2018 drew to a close, Cochran faced financial difficulties repaying initial investors and difficulty in attracting new ones. Neither knew the company existed on paper only.
Investors' questions about their promised returns were met with excuses, including an alleged federal government shutdown and cancer treatments.
Dr. Zachary Halsey, the family’s doctor, testified in January this year that he had no records of Cochran’s cancer diagnosis.
Michael Cochran was also allegedly unaware of the scam and believed Tactical Solutions Group had federal contracts and that the government was holding their money, according to investigators.
Conchran was a “puppet master” and had “everybody dancing at the bottom of their little strings,” prosecutors said at her trial earlier this year.
On February 6, 2019, the couple was due to fly to Lynchburg, Virginia, for a meeting with Bank of America to open an account capable of managing their supposed vast wealth.
Cochran postponed the trip and told friends she had the flu and then sent a picture of her husband unconscious on the kitchen floor at around midday.
An unresponsive Michael Cochran was finally taken to a nearby hospital, several hours after telling concerned friends that he didn’t want medical attention.
Doctors determined that he was suffering from cerebral edema – a swelling of the brain – and his blood glucose level was dangerously low. The husband was moved to a hospice and, five days later, on February 11, 2019, he was pronounced dead.
Cochran continued to run the business, and just days before a $4 million deal to sell half of her company on June 25, 2019, police executed a search warrant on the couple’s home.
In September 2020, she pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges and in March 2021 received an 11-year prison sentence, along with an order to pay nearly $2.5 million in restitution.
With the federal case against Tactical Solutions Group settled, a state investigation into Michael Cochran’s suspicious death was underway.
After initially believing the victim died of natural causes, Cochran was indicted for his murder in November 2021 before charges were dropped for his body to be exhumed for forensic tests.
Natalie was indicted again on murder charges in October 2023 and was convicted in January 2025.
