20/20 - Small Town, Big Con

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

The investigation into a multimillion-dollar con in a close-knit community helps investigators uncover the murder of a young father.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight, the trial so many have been talking about with details you haven't heard until now. It was just greed, more greed, more greed after that. What is this weird nightmare that's visited upon this couple? She's sick and now he's dying. For him to just go from being fine to suddenly comatose. What happened? What happened?

They were a great couple. They loved each other. They always wanted to be together. Two people with no background in federal contracting. Suddenly they're going to be arms dealers for the federal government. They were trusted in the community. A lot of the investors were family and close friends. Had Michael expressed any doubts about the business?

The Cochran business model seemed to be built on defrauding their friends and family. Investigators look at you and say, there were never any contracts. There were never any bids. It doesn't exist. When people found out out they want answers. I mean, it was all anyone could talk about.

Your friend, 38 years old, is gone. Behind all the raw beauty in the untamed West Virginia mountainside are deep-rooted secrets, lies and betrayal, and a small, close-knit community is upended. I was just calling to say if you knew when everything surrounding the investigation was going to be over. I don't understand what you mean by the investigation. They're asking people very personal questions of me and my husband's relationship. But I just can't keep living this way.

And at the center of all that unraveling is this couple, the Cochran's. It was on a Tuesday night on December the 23rd, 1980, 1036 p.m. Michael Brandon Cochran was born into the world. Tell me about Michael as a boy. He was a good kid. He always minded me. You know, Eddie came into his life when he was eight years old. When I met Michael, he had like a rat tail haircut and with the spiked hair.

We just kind of developed a good warm relationship. What about sports though? He was really into sports. Oh yeah, yeah. He was playing like the Pee-wee baseball. You could just tell right then he just took to it and was just like a natural. Michael Brandon was always playing baseball, basketball, football. He lifted weights as a hobby. He had a weight bench in his room. He got his first sandfield barbell set around 10 or 11

years old. And he would just go in there and turn his music up loud and just start working out. He just loved being healthy. Of course he loved the muscles, he loved the way it made him feel. In high school they started having like powerlifting competitions and Michael he got first place. We were really proud of him. At age 17 Michael meets a girl named Natalie Jessup, also 17, during a trip to the mall. It will change his life forever. We had to go out to the sporting goods place one day and there she was working behind the counter and she was flirting with him really bad, you could tell that.

And then the next thing I know they were dating. She seemed to be a relatively driven student in school. She was passionate about what she did. She loved her family. After high school, both Michael and Natalie head off to West Virginia University, where he studies computers and she studies to be a pharmacist.

The two freshmen had just started their first semester at WVU when Michael's mom, Donna, gets a call from Natalie. They got engaged in November of 1999. And when Michael got on the phone I just said Michael Brandon what in the world are you doing? Were you happy for him to be marrying Natalie? I wanted them to wait. He had just graduated high school like maybe five months before and I wanted him to just you know focus on his schooling and then six months later they

were married. The couple are the picture of happiness in their wedding photo. After graduation, they later have two children. And after six years of marriage, they settled in Daniels, West Virginia, here in this colonial home. It's a beautiful home on almost four acres of flat land.

Michael renovated that house. He just completely gutted it and remodeled it from top to bottom. As the years went on, did they have a happy marriage? As far as I know, they had a happy marriage. Yeah, you know, they're starting their life now. Been starting their family. You know, they've got good jobs.

Natalie was working as a pharmacist, and Michael was in IT. Yes, information technology. Yeah, it was like running cable wire, coaxial cable, and things like that. Life in West Virginia can kind of be summed up just like, here, people really focus on work, family, and their faith. I was Michael as a dad?

He was a proud dad. He doted on his kids and was a good provider. Was involved with them, the school activities and stuff. The couple gets involved in their community. He was a football coach, and he was a baseball coach. And wherever Michael was, you'd find Natalie working the sidelines. She was a sports socialite. And wherever Michael was, you'd find Natalie working the sidelines.

She was a sports socialite. When Michael was the coach, she was the one you got all the information from. She was the one that ordered the uniforms and got your sizes. He loved sports, and that was probably our biggest connection. Our family, you see their family at games, and that's really how it got started, is just loving sports and hanging out. Are there stories that you remember that when you really do think back to you all as couples, it kind of warms your heart that you remember? Oh, yes. Mike and I, we won a lot of championships together coaching our kids. Chris and Jennifer Davis bonded with the Cochran's over Little League, their young families, and church. They even went on vacations

together. Chris, a lawyer, was hired by Michael for a legal matter and the two became friends. What was it that made them sort of fit into your world? It was really the family aspect. They were a great couple. They loved each other. They always wanted to be together. We gravitate toward friends who were always together and loved their spouses, because we're always together. So you were really close.

We were, yes, we were very close. So at some point then you discover that one of your sons has diabetes. Initially it's very grim grim because it's, hey, this is what this is. It's never going to change. And this is what it's going to require. Coincidentally, Natalie happened to specialize

in diabetes management. How helpful was that for you in the beginning? Tremendous. Tremendous. She was amazing. Like she just gave us all the information we needed because you learn as you go. So she understood how insulin could affect the body. A thousand percent.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, the Cochran's make a career change and open a new business. So they seem to be doing well. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, they're doing very well. I invested and I spent $256,000. And this new venture will lead them straight to the CIA. Everybody is very involved with their kids around here into sports and that's where parents usually hang out at school sporting events. Just like his dad, Michael Cochran's son loves sports, especially baseball.

And it's a family affair. With Michael coaching local youth sports leagues, Natalie becomes treasurer of the middle school baseball program. She was heavily involved in that because Mike was a coach. They were involved in tons of leagues and different things. So you were all involved as friends in the sports world with your children? Yes, that's correct. We met the Cochran's because I had put my son into

the draft for the Little League Baseball. Tony McCall met Michael and Natalie after her husband died of leukemia, leaving her a single mom to three children. Michael very much took on a father figure role, especially for Cash. He was so good to him. He took him everywhere. They went fishing.

They went to practices. It was the dream come true to have that father figure when you don't have one for your kids and you want one. The Cochran's are a busy couple both on and off the field. They open a business that is supposed to provide supplies to the federal government. It's called Tactical Solutions Group or TSG and they soon begin looking for big investors to help them pay the upfront money that is sometimes needed for government contracts. And to everybody's surprise, Natalie up and quits her job as a pharmacist,

jumping into the new business completely. Great, you know, I mean, if you can quit your job as a pharmacist, like, oh wow. By all accounts, the new business appears to be flourishing. They were building onto their house and they put up a new fence. Mike got a car.

So they seem to be doing well. Oh absolutely, yeah. They're doing very well. Natalie tells friends they were inspired by that movie War Dogs, the one about two men with no experience in the defense industry who become arms dealers to the U.S. military and get in way over their heads. They call guys like us war dogs. Bottom feeders who make money off of war without ever stepping foot on the battlefield. When she told me that we're going to make

all of our employees watch war dogs as like an onboarding video, I said, well, you do realize that the guys went to jail, right? It might surprise people to know that any civilian can seek a government contract. All you have to do is register and then you can start bidding. It can be a small business, an individual, a nonprofit agreeing to provide goods or services to the government at a specific rate at an agreed upon time. The process is you discover the contract,

you bid on the contract. And if you're chosen, suddenly you're in business with the U.S. government. The Conqueror's website for their business, TSG, boasts impressive clientele from within the government, including the Department of Defense, FEMA, Homeland Security, and the CIA. Tactical Solutions Group was supposed to be a whole goods seller, so they could sell health care equipment, masks, firearms, and various things like that.

Michael Cochran would spend hours sifting through all of these government contracts, and he would tell Natalie what he'd found. She'd go to the investors and say, Michael found the most incredible investment. What did you know about what this business was all about? They got this niche. A woman owned small business. The idea of the federal government will pay $50 for a $10 hammer.

You just gotta be able to get in there and get the contracts and fight with the big guys. And all the couple needs now is a little startup cash. Most their investors were friends, family people that they knew. We invested $245,360.69. That was our retirement savings. Michael's mom Donna remembers the first time Natalie approached her about investing in the family business. Do you remember what she said? Yeah she asked us if we wanted to do the government contract. She said that she wanted to help us out you know when we got ready to retire. At what point did you decide

that maybe this was something you might be interested in getting involved in? About a month later she told me that she was doing it for her parents, that they'd made $60,000 in five months. And so we thought, well, you know, maybe we'll give it a try. That's a pretty good return. Yes, ma'am. It sure is. Donna Bolt says her daughter-in-law claims she could get her initial investment back with profit, sometimes in as little as 10 days.

So when they come to you for a potential investment, what's your initial thought? Well my initial thought was, sure. The conference close friends Chris and Jennifer Davis say the couple approached them after church saying they needed some major cash to fulfill a contract for dental labs, saying if they didn't get the money right away they'd lose the entire contract. But it was more than just hey do you want to invest? There were supposed to be dental facilities on military bases that's why we couldn't see any of the documents because she knew I was going to ask that I was like what's the continent? Well you

can't see it you don't have authorization we can't do that because Department of Defense and so we were like sure yeah man we'll we'll help out. How much were you investing? $511,000. When Chris Davis hears who's investing he says it seems like a safe opportunity. I trusted all those names and people in the community. So if they were involved it must be sound and good. Absolutely. The names that were lining up it fit like okay these people aren't gonna do anything crazy. Tony McCall says the circle of trust was how she too decides to invest. She had pulled someone in that I was close to and had been getting them to do contracts.

She says that person calls one day with an opportunity for the two of them to go in on a contract, but they've got to do it immediately. It pays out in 45 days, but you have to do it right now. Like eBay, she bids at the very last minute so that nobody can go in and bid over top of her. But you have to tell me right now.

And so I did it. I spent $256,000. By all accounts, it seemed to be a safe bet. The Cochran's appear to be doing well. I had seen the money that they were spending. They had multiple vehicles, they had motorcycles, they were buying trips overseas. The Cochran's are living the high life,

but then suddenly the youth sports league is broke. This ain't good. I really felt in my heart that something was going on. You don't have anything, it's all spent. Could something be a foul at the Little League? In the small community of Beckley, West Virginia, after just a year, Natalie and Michael Cochran's business is doing very well.

And family and friends noticed the couple seemed to be too. It appeared that Natalie and Michael were quite wealthy and they were living like they were. They had multiple vehicles, they had motorcycles, they were buying trips overseas to Paris, they went to Hawaii. You know, we just thought it was wonderful. We just thought they were doing so good,

that we were so proud of them. I mean, they had three homes, a pickup truck, motorcycles, a nice antique car. Him and Natalie drove up in a 1965 Shelby Cobra. It was a kit car. It was just something that they bought, and we were just very happy. We even took a ride in it.

They were living much higher than the majority of people in Beckley, West Virginia. Did you see a difference in how their lives seemed to be changing? Oh yeah. You were on vacation together. What kind of vacations did you take? We did beach vacations, and then we went to New York City a couple of times with them. And so the typical sightseeing and shopping.

Everybody got along? Oh, yes. It was fun. It was great. It was a lot of fun. From the outside, it appeared that a lot of the spending was on Michael's side. This was wealth that he had not experienced before, so he wanted to take advantage of it.

Some of the things that Michael Cochran purchased in this period were recreational vehicles, an airplane hanger. He had ambitions and endeavors to open up an aviation branch to this business. He really, really wanted to fly and he loved that type of stuff. He was working on his post-docs and he wanted to fly helicopters. They were a great couple. To get that kind of money, they were doing things for people and I mean good things. Michael especially was doing a lot of charity work.

He donated a weight room to a local middle school. When he found out his youth pastor was going to be homeless for a while, he actually purchased a property for him to live in. Natalie even gets involved with local organizations and charities. She volunteered, wanted to do this and wanted to do that. She was helping us with juvenile diabetes research, all the fundraisers for that. And then we did a 5K run. She was good at that.

She would organize it, get sponsors, get the word out. One time she and Mike were at the house and she told me that they were going to buy a town in Africa because that was gonna be their mission, you know, pay for everyone's home and build homes. Natalie also helps raise money for the Middle School Baseball League. Their friend Chris is board president.

We had a fundraiser and from the fundraiser we believe we raised a little over $15,000. It was a big deal. As treasurer of the Little League, Natalie manages the bank account. But members get suspicious when the money all but disappears. But you knew there was a big chunk of money in there. Yes, there should have been over $20,000 in there. Absolutely.

Any idea of how it was drained like that? Nobody knew it was missing until we were told it's missing. The League brings in a private investigator to look into where the money's gone. And I talked to the board and I explained to them, you don't have anything but $31 in a frozen bank account. There's no records of anything as to where this money went. It's all spent.

There was an audit that was done. There were purchases made that weren't approved by the league. There was purchases to TJ Maxx, purchases to Olive Garden. And then when I started adding it up, I'm like, $32,000 in one night you raise for two sports teams, and it all just disappears. I mean, there's no way to rectify that. Questions are now swirling over the missing money and if Natalie could be involved. And when some investors with the Cochrane's business get wind of it,

they're getting concerned about the money they've been promised. As time is going on and you're not hearing anything, are you starting to panic at all? We'd ask and say, Natalie, we need our money. I said, you know, what, you know, our car's going to break down. We need the money back. She would say, it's coming, I promise. And then she would send me text messages and say,

your money is going to be deposited in your bank account within the next 24 hours. And we'd wait. And it was never there. You didn't get anything? No. And it was never there. You didn't get anything? No. Donna says that any communication she had about the couple's business was typically with Natalie, not her son. Every time that I received any kind of message, it was a text message from Natalie.

It was she and I that was constantly going back and forth with contracts. Meantime, Natalie continues to portray the business as extremely successful. From the outside looking in, I would have probably been pretty impressed. I thought, man, right here in Raleigh County, West Virginia, these people are knocking it out of the park. One investor says it's astonishing how much money Natalie says she's pulling in. She did give me a number at the time. You know, this was like $343 million

we're going to have to put in this bank. That was a little hard to believe. Natalie and Michael tell a local bank their business is worth more than $500 million when they apply for a $100,000 loan. Was her business worth $500 million? No, absolutely not. It turns out that Cochran's business is not what it appears to be.

I said, in pure West Virginian, this ain't good. I really felt in my heart something was going on. The fundamental problem is that it was all a lie. And when secrets come to light, it's far worse than anyone could have imagined. The IRS is the most powerful collection agency in the world, and with the April 15th deadline fast approaching, enforcement is in full swing. If you have back taxes or unfiled returns, time is running out. Waiting isn't just risky, it could cost you big.

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There is nothing wrong with doing well and having a successful business. The Cochran's and their business tactical solutions group put themselves out to be legitimate government contractors who were bidding on legitimate government contracts. She always made all of them look like they were good investments. The problem is there never was any legitimate income flowing from government contracts. All the money and cash flow is coming from investors. There were no contracts. There were never any contracts. There were never any bids.

It doesn't exist. The businesses didn't exist at all, really, legitimately. They existed on paper. It was clear that it was a Ponzi scheme. When it comes to a Ponzi scheme, there's no real business. There's no money being generated. Early investors get paid by new investor money, like shifting poker chips from one

pile to another. And as long as the money's coming in from new investors, the Ponzi scheme can continue. If you're just taking one investor's money and giving it to another investor as if it's a legitimate return on their investment, that's a fraud. I said, no, these are friends of mine. I've seen what they've done in the community. Successful Ponzi schemes almost always rely on trust. And you often find that people start very close to home. The Cochrane business model seemed

to be built on defrauding their friends and family. Many of them knew them their entire lives and they had no reason to not trust them. It would hurt a lot less for this to have been someone that I didn't know that had scammed me out of money. It would hurt a lot less. I was already wounded from my husband passing away and my kids the same. These were friends, neighbors, and family members who were defrauded and the question is whether Michael knew about it. Michael was not the brains of the couple.

He was a great guy. But Natalie was the brains of the operation. And Michael would look for contracts on the government website, and then he would give them to Natalie, and she would make the bid. Had Michael expressed any concerns, any doubts about the business to you? Not about the business. He was stressed about the government. He did not understand why the government will not give them their money. And he just couldn't figure it out. How can they do this?

But of course, the federal government didn't owe the Cochran's any money because they'd never conducted any business with them. Michael Cochran was asking her questions very similar to the questions being asked by the investors who were trying to get their money back. She was giving the same excuses to Michael that she was giving to the investors. Natalie would tell me, we're being audited, there's a government shutdown. There was always some excuse with her. The lives and paychecks of some 800,000 federal workers hanging in the balance.

Around Christmas time in 2018, there was a government shutdown and it lasted until January 25th of the following year. Day 32 of the government shutdown, now beginning its second month, we have never seen this. Natalie used this whole government shutdown to her advantage. Her investors were coming and saying, we want our money, we'd like to pull it out.

And she would say, well, I can't, the government is shut down, there's no way to get access to your money, they're not paying anybody. She had a never-ending list of reasons that they were not seeing their returns. When she could no longer blame the federal government for the delays, she turned to, I guess,

more of the emotional side of saying that she had cancer. We're feeling bad for her. She even told us that she had cancer, that she wasn't going to do anything about it. She was going to let God take care of it. And if he took her on, then that would be fine. And I just got so distraught and emotional and I kept telling her she needed to fight, not to give up. She said she was in stage three. Her and Mike were talking about not going through chemo and radiation and just living what life she has left.

Was that devastating? Oh, completely. We were all pretty devastated. To the point, we all get the paperwork to go get our bone marrow tested to see if there was any way we could help her. Remember, Toni McCall had lost her husband to leukemia. She was skeptical about Natalie's claim of having cancer. I believe that Natalie used the leukemia to stall

on having any payments. I knew she didn't have stage three leukemia because it's not in stages, it's in types. Everything pointed to the fact that she did not have it. She had told us that she was losing her hair from the chemo she was taking and she flips her hair over and she has a perfect dime-sized circle where she has shaved a spot in her hair. And if you lose your hair from chemo, you don't see five o'clock shadow. What woman would shave a spot on their head

to say, look, I'm losing my hair? And so I absolutely knew at that point that she would do anything to cover up and to lie. Then early one morning, Michael and Natalie are set to take a private plane to Virginia for a scheduled bank meeting. But they never make that flight. I just kept asking, what happened? What happened? On the morning of February 6th, the plan was that the Cochran's, Michael and Natalie, were going to fly to Virginia to visit the Bank of America there. She had text messages going with me and Jennifer.

So the morning of February 6th, they were going to go take a flight. She said she was too sick to fly. She had the flu and the norovirus, and it hit her so hard because of her cancer. She had gone to the doctor, and they put her on such a high dose of steroids that her blood sugar was elevated. She had asked to borrow a bottle of insulin.

So she needed a bottle of your son's insulin. Yes. And I told her that Chris was getting ready to leave the house, that he could drop it off for her. Chris drops the insulin around 1030 that morning. Jennifer and Chris receive a photo about two hours later, around 1230, of Michael laying unconscious in the Cochran's kitchen floor. Michael was laying in the fetal position in the floor in his kitchen.

So she sends a photo out of him on the floor? Yeah. And my reaction in the text was, is he OK? What's going on? He's fine. The contractors are here, put him on the couch. Okay. Michael is moved from the floor to the couch.

People start coming into the home saying, hey, you should probably take him to the hospital. Throughout the day, some of the couple's friends come to the house while others text Natalie, worried about Michael. Every time we would check on him, we would get, he's fine. He's gonna sleep it off. He's sleeping it off. She said that he was sleeping it off on the couch. The wording of the messages were as if she was communicating with him.

He won't go to the hospital. He won't go to the hospital? Yes. When she says, he won't go to the hospital, in my mind, I'm thinking that he's told her, I'm going to go to the hospital. Almost unilaterally, all of Natalie's friends were urging her to take Michael to the hospital and Michael needed medical attention. And so you're looking at close to eight hours

that this man, that he was incapacitated, he was unconscious, he was on the couch, and pretty much unresponsive. I get a message at around 6.30, I'm at Gavin's basketball game, At around 6.30, I'm at Gavin's basketball game. And the message says, can you come by after the game? Chris Davis shows up and insists that they take Michael to the hospital. And they load Michael in the car.

I knew something was wrong. He's just totally unresponsive. I was like, well, he's got to go. He's got to go to the hospital. He's been unconscious for seven, eight hours. We're getting him to the hospital. Michael got to the ER at Raleigh General Hospital. His blood glucose was at 21. He was critical.

And he was intubated. A blood glucose level of 21 would be extremely low, dangerously low, and basically result likely in some sort of massive cognitive dysfunction, coma, seizure, even death. Michael's parents are at home that night with no idea of their son's condition. We came home from church, watched a little TV. I was in the bed.

Eddie brought me my phone. He said, you got a text message from Natalie. It's 1030 at night. Concerned by such a late night text, Michael's mom Donna checks Natalie's message. She sent me a picture. There's Michael Brandon in the bed and he's on the ventilator, unconscious and responsive. The Davises also received texts from Natalie showing Michael in the hospital. I just kept asking her on text message, what happened, what happened? Doctors determined that Michael is suffering from cerebral edema. Cerebral edema is the medical term for swelling in the brain.

We usually think about cerebral edema in the setting of a big bleed or a traumatic event. Michael ran and he was fighting, fighting to breathe. He was trying his best to live. Michael spends at least four and a half days in a hospital in Charleston. She makes this decision. She's going to take him off the ventilator and everything.

What are you thinking at that point, Jennifer? I think there's total shock. I just remember thinking, this isn't happening. This can't be real. Yeah, this was so tragic. What is this weird nightmare that just, my goodness. That's visited upon this couple. Yeah.

She's sick, and now he's dying. Like,'s poor kids My goodness, it's poor like This is awful It was awful For five days he received medical treatment and he was in a coma never regained consciousness and Passed away on February the 11th That the hospice house in Beckley. Your friend 38 years old within days is gone. It was awful. It was tragic.

It is just sad you know we went to the funeral. It just all seems surreal. Everything's just kind of like you're like in this fog, you know. It's just unimaginable. After Mike had passed, Natalie called me one day and said that I've created this scholarship in his memory. that I've created this scholarship in his memory. Natalie starts a scholarship called the Coach Michael Cochran Legacy Scholarship. It appeared that Natalie was selecting people

who were family members. There were also people that Michael coached. Tony McCall's son is one of those high school students that Natalie had offered a four-year college scholarship to. These scholarships, they're the kind that kids dream of. Natalie, newly widowed, continues running her businesses. But then four months after her husband's death, she suddenly decides to sell nearly half of

Tactical Solutions Group for $4 million. She had negotiated to sell that business with a buyer, offering to buy a 49% interest of her business. So this buyer had wired her $50,000 as an earnest deposit on his buy-in to this business. But before the deal can go through, police show up at the Cochran home with a search warrant. She said, oh, they came here and they took everything. When they raided her house that day in June, that was huge. I mean, it was all anyone could talk about.

When police searched the Cochran home, they find something unexpected that could explain Michael's sudden death. A man, you know, 38 years old, what a fitness guru he was, to suddenly die in the midst of financial crimes occurring, I mean, that's pretty suspicious. So they decide to exhume Michael Cochran's body. Does the big con turn into an even bigger crime? At first, this was just a Ponzi scheme investigation. Tonight, all eyes on the headline-making court case then just wrapped.

The interest in this case was huge. Police are investigating the death of Michael Cochran. To suddenly die in the midst of allegations of financial crimes was pretty suspicious. So you think he was duped as well? 100% I believe that. The defense counsel made it clear they were living this lavish lifestyle. So how couldn't he have known that this was a Ponzi scheme?

Natalie weaved such a web of lies, keeping us all drinking the Kool-Aid. They open the fridge, they find the vial of insulin. That was huge. Did anybody take insulin in the house? No. I said, insulin? What are you doing with the insulin in the refrigerator? Prosecutors called that the murder weapon. What keeps Gavin alive? She used to take life.

Just in shock. I'm still in shock. The defense can say, maybe he died of something else. I know that he took steroids and he took many other supplements. He was a ticking bomb. Your daughter-in-law is being accused of killing your son. I mean, how do you kill somebody that you're supposed to love? love.

It's been seven months since 38-year-old Michael Cochran's death, and Private Eye James Cresenberry sends an employee on an undercover mission to Michael's wife Natalie's garage. I just seen a sign and figured I'd come out this way. She was selling a bunch of things and items at her house. This is security camera cable and then this is ethernet cable. He's there to secretly get a closer look. The question was still out there of whether she was sitting on a pile of money, all these different questions.

Had there been something there that shouldn't have been there, would have turned it over to law enforcement. She saw smiles and looking at him and trying to be polite. And as soon as he turns his back, she changes her look. Like her whole demeanor changes. In the months since Michael Cochran's death, authorities have started to take a hard look at the Cochran's death, authorities have started to take a hard look at the Cochran's so-called businesses.

I received a phone call from a trooper who had spoke with a local business person who had purchased some firearms from the Cochrans. And he had a problem with getting his firearms delivered or the money returned. And he was looking for help in resolving that matter. He had been solicited to be an investor in contracts. He never did it because the information he was receiving from Natalie Cochran on these investment solicitations didn't make sense to him.

I was like, yes, we definitely need to take a look at this. So that disgruntled customer then connected investigators with someone who said he had invested with Natalie Cochran. The problem that he was encountering was he kept getting excuse after excuse after excuse with getting his money returned. Bob was going through the records as they were coming in and so there's a ton of information there to go through and Bob's looking at it. We're sitting there one day and he goes, I'll be damned.

He said, it's a damn Ponzi scheme. As they dig in, they take notice of the investigation into that Little League account. Remember, board members had been suspicious of Natalie after money had gone missing. The Shady Spring Little League bank account is one of the many accounts she used to facilitate her Ponzi scheme. Natalie would deposit from their company and then sift it back out in various different ways. Natalie called the alleged financial crimes bogus, and ultimately authorities decided not to charge her with

anything related to the Little League. The league never recouped any money. It was all just lost. It's late into the summer and those generous Michael Cochran legacy scholarships, which Natalie had promised students, are now supposed to be paid out. There were eight people in total. They are full ride scholarships for up to eight years. Tony McCall's son was given one of those college scholarships. There was no money. It was a fake scholarship. Natalie weaved such a web of lies.

They were bizarre like that. It was still keeping us all in the flock. Natalie Cochran has insisted the scholarships would have been paid if her assets hadn't eventually been frozen by the government. But investigators had a different view. When she created these, we saw that as an attempt to dispel rumors. Rumors were circulating that her business was being looked at, that she didn't have this wealth and this money. We had pretty clearly identified at least, and I may be under at least 10 known victims of the Ponzi scheme.

The most obvious red flag at the time was that nobody was getting any money back. We had more than enough evidence and documentation to proceed with indictment. So she's arrested. Yes. What did you think of that? We were glad. When she was arrested, she was wearing the tailgate socialite t-shirt. That was the true Natalie right there.

Natalie Cochran faces 26 charges related to the fraud. She pleads not guilty, but her investors are deeply distraught over the hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost money. I spent $256,000. $511,000. Almost a quarter of a million dollars over the course of two and a half years. We loved her and we believed her. Everything she told us, we believed everything she said to us.

Chris Davis says he too was taken in by his trust in Natalie and by the impressive paperwork she supplied. It looks legitimate. I mean, there are a lot of companies and there are a lot of entities here. Why would she do this? I don't know if it was the greed or the position or status. Reaching a deal with prosecutors, Natalie pled guilty to two counts, an unlawful monetary transaction and wire fraud. And then she went off to prison for 11 years for fraud.

She did. May 1st of 2021 is when she finally went into the prison at Hazleton. The court also ordered her to pay back $2.5 million to the investors she fleeced. But with little income coming in, it will likely be a very long process. Did you feel that was fair? That was right? The judge said, if I can give you more, I would. He acknowledged the fact that the lawyers had reached this plea agreement and had capped what he could have done to her.

So, no, at that moment, I didn't believe it was fair. And just as I told the judge, there's 2.5 million reasons why it it was fair. And just as I told the judge, there's 2.5 million reasons why it wasn't fair. But this isn't over yet. A search warrant in the fraud case had led investigators into the Cochran home and brought an unexpected surprise.

They open the fridge. They find the vial of insulin. It's suspicious that it shouldn't be there. Nobody in the family is diabetic. Does that insulin have anything to do with Michael Cochran's death? We'll hear from his wife Natalie for the first time as investigators hit her with some tough questions. We'll be having a conversation with Natalie Cochran. This investigation is just getting started.

At first, this was just a Ponzi scheme investigation. But as authorities investigate the fraud case, they also begin questioning Michael Cochran's unexpected death. Michael Cochran, who was 38 years old, seemingly a fit, healthy man. He took care of himself. He did work out. Worked out all the time. To suddenly die in the midst of allegations of financial crimes, that's pretty suspicious. No autopsy had been done on Michael Cochran. The death certificate issued by the hospice where he died

listed natural causes. There was no medical examiner involvement. Natalie Cochran gave different versions of what happened to Michael on February the 6th to multiple people. So authorities arranged a meeting with Natalie. Today's date is April 8th, 2019. I can explain to her we were looking into Michael's death.

Natalie, just tell me how things progressed with Michael. February the 6th, whatever day things were going to be, I was still there. He was just picking on me, he started tearing up in the same. And I heard him hit his head and then I read a man beat him up. And so I didn't know what to do because Michael's very adamant after he got out of the hospital last time. He said, if you ever hit me in the hospital again, you're gonna be dead. It turns out Michael had been hospitalized for several days back in November

for potential exposure to black mold. Natalie says she thought one of his training supplements could have been making him sick. It was her belief that Michael had taken an overdose of this supplement that she alleged was coming from Mexico. I've always been on him, like, this stuff's not safe, it's even, came in a bottle that said brain will be suddenly, not stuff's not safe. It's even hanging in a bottle that says brain will do something not for human ingestion.

It's like therapy. Right. You're taking it to gang mats, and the food is about cut up. Gotcha. And I also had insulin completed in it, but bodybuilders can manipulate insulin to cut my heart. She introduces insulin in the discussion as part of Michael Cochran's weightlifting regimen.

Michael was all about, he was just very into bodybuilding. Is there any chance that he would have purposely taken too much of that? He did purposely take too much, but he was trying to super load. There was always this effort to make sure that there was an explanation for insulin being somehow involved in Michael's death. In the third conversation she brought up that Michael was injecting with insulin. She had done a complete pivot from where it was all this supplement. Now Michael's injecting insulin. The insulin he was doing through injection.

Correct. He would inject it before meals so that it would cover any carbs that he ate. Insulin is used primarily by diabetics to essentially help us regulate the blood sugar in our body. He wasn't diabetic obviously. No. Not bad, Hank, obviously. No. And remember, the fraud investigation is still ongoing. In June of 2019, federal and state authorities conduct a search of the Cochran house. Natalie is there.

She was in the garage. The search warrant was done based off the financial crime information investigation only. We anticipated finding additional evidence regarding this Ponzi scheme. But they found something else they didn't expect. Sometimes things happen in investigations that you call it fate. I started rummaging through the refrigerator and there's this bottle of insulin sitting right there. They shouldn't be there.

Nobody in the family is diabetic. That was huge. Where did it come from? Who's does it? Natalie's got the same answer for authorities and for Michael's mother. She said, oh they came here and they took everything and she said they even took the insulin out of the refrigerator. Now what did you make of that? Did anybody take insulin in the house? No. I said insulin, what are you doing with the insulin in the refrigerator? I keep that here, she said, for Gavin when he came over if he needed a shot because he's a diabetic. You believed it? We did. Remember, Gavin is Chris and Jennifer Davis' son. They tell authorities

they never stored his insulin at the Cochran house, But then they recalled the bag they left for Natalie the morning Michael collapsed. The investigator said, did she ever borrow insulin from you? And that's when you're like, yeah, she needed it. She had cancer and she got sick. And that's when they were like, you know when? And I felt like at that moment, we both were like,

oh my goodness, because now we know that she's a thief and a fraud. When we started seeing the text messages with Jennifer Davis about insulin, it was very revealing. If you believe the previous things that Natalie has said, she should have already had insulin readily available in the home. So it made no sense to go through all this effort. I think it's clear that she poisoned him with insulin. Authorities develop a theory of how Natalie may have used insulin to kill Michael.

When he's finally taken to the emergency room he presented with a blood sugar level of 21. He's not diabetic. You get low blood sugar by receiving too much insulin. Natalie had access to insulin. She had the means to inject it. She knew exactly what insulin would do. Investigators believe there's enough circumstantial evidence to tie Natalie to Michael's death. 39-year-old Natalie Cochran is now accused of the February 2019 murder of her husband Michael. Natalie Cochran pleads not guilty. Was that hard for you to accept that your daughter-in-law is being accused of killing your son? Yeah it was really hard to believe because I, how do you kill somebody that you're supposed to love?

And they're your children's father. But why would Natalie want to kill her husband? The investigators saw that the text messages looked suspicious. Michael didn't know about the Ponzi scheme, but he was learning. Michael was about to discover he didn't have millions, perhaps a billion dollars of legitimately earned income inbound from the federal government. And that was a problem for Natalie.

Here is exactly the motive of why she felt like she had to kill Michael. Opening arguments began today in the Natalie Cochran trial. In January, more than three years after she was indicted for the first degree murder of her husband Michael, Natalie Cochran's trial is finally underway. There were media outlets from all over the country here. The interest in this case was huge. For Michael's family and friends, the three-year wait for justice has been agonizing. How tough was that for you all to just have this thing drag on before it's going to be

resolved? It was hard. Yes, very hard. It's been lots of time praying. What was it like for you to see Natalie in that courtroom? I can't say that I really even thought about her. We just had to get justice from Michael. Natalie Cochran is a young woman.

An 11-year sentence with good time served for the Ponzi scheme is relatively short versus a life sentence for murder. Those stakes are incredibly high. All right, now, Mr. Truman, that you may proceed. Thank you. On February the 5th of 2019, Michael Cochran was a 200 pound healthy 38 year old man. By midday of February 6th of 2019, he had lost consciousness and he would never regain consciousness. The state needs to get ahead of the fact that it's an entirely circumstantial case.

You got to tell the jury, you're not going to get the stuff you get on TV. There's no DNA, there's no fingerprints. This is it. But that's enough to convict. This is a complex state-slave journal of the jury. But it's built by the state of West Virginia on conjectures and innuendos, and glaringly lacking in votive and the evidence necessary to prove that Mike Line killed her husband.

Natalie understood that we cannot present a defense that would somehow skirt the issue of the Ponzi scheme or that would hide it from the jury. We admitted to the jury what was well known to everybody. The fact that she is perhaps a fraud and perhaps a cheat perhaps a fraud and perhaps a cheat. And that you wouldn't perhaps want to invite her home for Sunday dinner, that you wouldn't like her, does not translate into being a murderer. We absolutely believe that the imminent failure of the Ponzi scheme

was Natalie's motive to kill Michael. That was going to happen and it was going to happen very, very quickly if she didn't act. What Michael Cochran didn't know is certainly one of the most important questions here. But to me, what's more important is what he was about to know. The consequences that would come when he found out that information. And at the heart of the case, a vial of insulin.

Prosecutors called that the murder weapon. Yeah. Yeah. What keeps Gavin alive, she used to kill. She used to take life. On the morning of February 6th, Jennifer Davis remembers getting a text from Natalie asking to borrow that insulin. She testifies about that exchange. Can you just explain to me what's going on in this conversation? She said that her and Mike, they were both sick,

and she had to start taking small insulin shots. Did you provide that insulin to her? I put the insulin in a bag and gave it to my husband, and he dropped it off on the porch on the way to work. Several hours later, Natalie sends Jennifer a picture of Michael unconscious on the kitchen floor. What did this picture mean to you when you received it? Just that it was just shocking that he was laying there.

Natalie contacts two construction workers that had worked for the family, says, Michael's on the floor, I'm gonna need help picking him up from the floor and taking him into the living room. So after Chris Davis drops off the bag of insulin, Natalie sends out a text. She invites several friends over throughout the day to check on his condition and essentially make sure he's okay,

but not take him to the hospital. In a statement to ABC News, Natalie Cochran says that quote, Mike hated the hospital. He threatened several people that we better not take him back. Stephanie Hamilton, a physician's assistant, came over to check Michael out and found him non-responsive. What did you specifically notice? That he needed to be checked. I said even people with the history of seizures,

anytime they have one, they need to be checked. I kept offering, like, I would go with her. She said she was going to let him sleep it off. You also heard from Error, it's related to that. Take a look at that 21 What does that mean? No one should ever have a blood sugar of 21

It's gonna happen to you They're in a coma Probably near death At some point you go over yes, and I walk in the living room. He's playing on the couch. Like he's sleeping. What did you do? So I go over to him, I just remember saying, man, hey buddy, I'm gonna take you to the hospital. And that's exactly what I did. But by this time

it's too late. Michael gets to the hospital but the damage has been done. Take a moment you're okay. Chris it was very tough for you in court when they showed you the photo that you had already seen of Mike. Yeah. Why did it hit you so hard? I wished I could have got to him first. Over two days, prosecutors have meticulously laid out the timeline of the day Michael Cochran died.

The question now, will they be able to prove that it was his wife, Natalie, who killed him? Mr. Truman, you may call your first witness. As prosecutors lay out their case against Natalie Cochran, they intend to show that she not only had the means, but the motive and the opportunity to kill her husband Michael back in February of 2019.

Thank you, Your Honor. State calls Robert Hinesman. Raise your right hand, please, sir. Bob Hinesman was the primary investigator of the defendant's Ponzi scheme, and he explained there was really no evidence that Michael knew what was going on. Now, the defense has floated the theory that Michael Copeland was up to his eyeballs in this Ponzi scheme. From your investigation, do you have any evidence that would support that?

He believed that they had obtained contracts and that they would be receiving money for these contracts. Do you have any evidence that he knew that this was a fraud being carried out? No. It was important to Hammer Home that Michael Cochran was at least cognizant of the scheme because it would destroy the state's theory of why it happened. Have you, in your thorough investigation of this case, talked to the children of Mr. and Mrs. Cochran? No. Would it surprise you if I told you that they observed

their parents work on the federal contracts and you're telling this jury that he had no knowledge of these contracts? I'm not telling the jury that. I said that he knew about the contracts that he was led to believe were bid on by their business. The investigation had revealed that Michael was beginning to ask some really tough questions of Natalie about where the money was going.

The day before, February 5th of 2019, it was arranged by the Cochran's to charter a flight from Beckley down to Lynchburg, Virginia to meet with the Bank of America banker. And of course, that was a meeting that Natalie could never allow to happen because if it did happen, then Michael would know and that would have been the end of her Ponzi scheme. Court Nexon was an employee of Bank of America. He testified via Zoom in this trial because he's not local. And that was to take place February 6th of 2019, correct?

Correct. Looks like they said they were gonna fly in so we were basically responding to their schedule and setting things up as best we could. Did that meeting take place? Never took place. Natalie was becoming desperate at this point. Prosecutors argue that if Michael was in the dark,

Natalie's deception was about to come to light. Putting Jennifer Davis on the stand explains how Natalie got the insulin that she needed to kill Michael. Jennifer, at this point, you are offering to help out a friend in need, is that fair to say? Yes. Did she accept your offer of help?

Yes, she did. She asked if she could borrow a bottle of insulin. According to Dr. Uribe, who was one of our forensic pathologists, the only way that Michael's blood sugar could have plummeted to 21 was if someone else had given him insulin. There was profound hypoglycemia.

Hypoglycemia is low blood glucose. Once he was treated for the hypoglycemia, the blood sugar went up and then it went back down again. To me, that is a significant pattern. And why is that pattern significant to you? Because there are only a few things that can do that. One of the big things is insulin administration. But the defense poses an important question. Could Michael have injected himself as part of a bodybuilding regimen?

Dr. Uribe pushes back against that suggestion. To my knowledge, bodybuilders don't use insulin. During the murder investigation, Michael's remains were exhumed, and Dr. Uribe conducted an autopsy. And what did you determine were Michael Cochran's cause and manner of death? I came to the conclusion that the cause of death was exogenous insulin administration. Guard of the State calls Timothy Bledsoe to the stand. Tim was able to draw all of the parallels and connect all of the pieces. He was able to explain for the jury

how and why the Ponzi scheme and the failure of the Ponzi scheme led to the murder of Michael Cochran. It was about telling that story, another piece to the puzzle. And I think overall, I think we were successful. And we previously heard Jennifer Davis testify that she had insulin sent to the defendant's home. Is that your understanding? Yes. Do you recall why the

defendant needed the insulin that morning? I believe it was something related to cancer treatment. And throughout the entire course of your investigation, did you ever uncover any evidence of the defendant had cancer? No. Did you waver at all? Did you wonder maybe the prosecutors had this wrong,

that it was just a horrible set of circumstances? Not once they talked to us and then I started going back through you know my text and you know Chris and I started talking and then I was just in shock disbelief. I was still in shock. It just doesn't seem real at all. at all. But it was hard. Prosecutors have rested their case. Now it's the defense's turn

to persuade the jury that Natalie Cochran is innocent. And to do that, they bring in their own star witnesses, Michael and Natalie's children. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing about the truth? So help your God. Yes, sir. The state has wrapped its case of circumstantial evidence. Now it's the defense's turn.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Good morning. They believe there's not enough evidence to prove that Natalie Cochran killed her husband, Michael. The atmosphere in the courtroom was, what's the defense going to bring? You could sense some anxiety there of what the defense was going to say about Michael to try and explain away Natalie's actions. The defense has already told the jury that Michael Cochran was, quote, a ticking bomb

because of his alleged medical problems and health history. Their game plan is to discredit the prosecution's case and Michael Cochran himself. There was no forensic evidence to tie her to a murder. Zero forensic evidence. They called two surprising witnesses to the stand, Natalie and Michael's children. Would you state your name for the record? Nicole Cochran.

What type of medication was he taking? I know that he took steroids and he took many other supplements. Did he do it daily? Yes, every morning. Was he into supplements and vitamins and all of that stuff? Oh absolutely. He took his supplements, his pre-workouts and those things. He tried to take care of his body. He would lay all of his pills out on the counter and there would be so many of them that they would just sit in a whole circle and it looked like the size of a dinner plate. And then he would scoop them handfuls at a time into his mouth.

The theory by the defense counsel is that Michael Cochran was not a healthy individual. Did you start noticing changes in your father's health? He was very agitated and angry, more so than not. And he was having a lot of headaches. The defense asked the same line of questioning to the Cochran's son, whose face is concealed on the witness stand because he's a minor. Did he ever inject anything? Definitely steroids.

He took supplements and things like that. Did he take steroids? He never took any steroids. If you would see him, everything that he has, all the muscles he has is natural. Hard work. Mike wasn't a bodybuilder. He ate too much pizza to be a bodybuilder. Was he fit? He was. Was he in shape? He was. Did he work hard for that? He did. He was taking things from Mexico, they were saying. Things that were not approved by the FDA. What did he get from Mexico, do you know? I don't know the name of the steroid,

but it was definitely an anabolic. What was that like to see them testifying on their mother's behalf? You know, they love their mother. Of course they're going to defend their mother, but the things they said about their father was really heartbreaking. Defense lawyers argue that Michael Cochran

was not exactly a healthy 38-year-old, and that his lifestyle led to four hospital visits between 2017 and the time of his death in 2019. He got sick and I feel like around that time is when you could just notice that he started to change a little bit just for getting stuff all the time and he was more aggressive. Towards whom? Aggressive? Towards everybody. Natalie had told friends and family that her husband also suffered from seizures,

plus symptoms of black mold poisoning from renovations he did on their house. Had you heard of him having seizures? We were told that he had seizures and he was exposed to black mold. The defense also tries to hammer away at the state's motive, the Ponzi scheme. They claim Natalie Cochran wasn't the only one involved. They say Michael was too. I always saw him working on his computer and he would say that that's what he was doing. Say that he was doing what?

That he was filling out contracts. Did your mother do that? No. Who was working on the contracts? My dad. We had heard that Natalie Cochran was going to take the stand. She had informed the judge that she was going to testify on her own behalf. And at the last minute, she decided that she wasn't going to testify.

The jury was extremely attentive, but the jury was never more invested in what was being said than in the closing arguments. All right, are you folks ready to deliver your closing remarks? Natalie was a diabetic counselor and a pharmacist. She knew that injecting insulin into a non-diabetic would cause harm. Is that the action of a planning cold-blooded killer? She would get that insulin ahead of time. Not on the day of the murder and involve two witnesses against her right there and then. She chose over and over after repeated pleas from friends and loved ones to leave Michael on the couch.

It's a horrible tragedy, but a tragedy, not a murder. The state failed to answer a couple of questions. And that is, when did it happen? Where did it happen? How did it happen? There was no deductive reasoning where you would say, well, it was Professor Plum with the candlestick in the study. Well, it was actually the pharmacist in the kitchen,

according to the prosecution's theory. She had a clear motive, and you saw that leading up to this date, Michael was about to find out what she was doing to people. Do we know what he was going to do with that information? We never will, because he won't have the chance to tell us. We never will, because he won't have the chance to tell us. Ms. Cochran has committed crimes of fraud, but that doesn't make her a murderer. We're asking you to find her not guilty. Twenty-one was such a crucial number because nobody's blood glucose should be at that

level unless you've had an injection of insulin. A normal blood glucose level would be anywhere from 70 to around 130. 21. And that's the number we're going to rely on to convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that this defendant killed Michael Cochran. Find this defendant guilty of first-degree, because that's exactly what she did. The case is now in the hands of the jury. Were prosecutors able to convince them that Natalie Cochran killed her husband?

Or did the defense poke enough holes to sow reasonable doubt? People yell out, there's a verdict. And then people start scurrying to get a seat inside the courtroom. Has the jury reached a verdict? Yes. When that verdict comes back they were shocked. The verdict handed down just weeks ago came quickly. The jury deliberated for less than two hours. Would the defendant please rise?

The jury verdict is as follows. The defendant is guilty of murder in the first degree. What was it like when you heard guilty? We were so happy because we're finally getting justice for Michael after all these years. You know, I could just feel my spirit and everything just went up. You know, this is what it's supposed to be. It was exhilarating to hear the word guilty. And all I can think is we did it.

We got her. And the jury is not finished. They've got another decision to make. What's known as the Mercy Phase. Good morning, members of the jury. Good morning. You are back. Mercy, which means the defendant gets parole eligibility

after serving 15 years, or no mercy, which means there defendant gets parole eligibility after serving 15 years, or no mercy, which means there's no eligibility for parole. You'll raise your right hand, please. A slew of Natalie Cochran's family, including her mom, tearfully take the stand. I beg. I don't know what else I can say except please give mercy to her. For a second time, Natalie's 19-year-old daughter faces the jury that's already convicted her mom in her father's murder.

I missed her at my high school graduation. And I missed her on the day I moved into college. I'm begging you to give her mercy so that I don't have to miss more. Natalie Cochran's family ended up leaving when the family of Michael Cochran, when they were up there. Raise your right hand please, ma'am. We, along with our family and friends,

have sat quietly and graciously and painfully watched and listened as Michael's good name has been murdered time and time again. It was one of the most intense pieces of testimony in the entire trial. This spoiled, evil, narcissistic murderer had seldom, if ever, been denied this which she wanted. She will try to blame my precious son Michael for her evilness and deceit. Do you remember what you said that you felt the strongest about? When I said that, please, please, don't give her any mercy.

We ask that you please, please, no mercy. She never gave Michael any mercy. I think it was extremely riveting for the jury to see. We, the jury, unanimously do not recommend mercy. Natalie Cochran will spend the rest of her life in prison. But the pain lives on for Michael's friends, Jennifer and Chris, whose son's insulin may very well have been used to end their friend's life. I trusted her.

And that's the exact same thing she used. And borrowed from me. And that's hard. And that's something I'll have to live with. As far as I'm concerned, justice has been done. She's where she needs to be. You've lost your son. You've lost financially. You've lost a lot. Yes we have, but we have

each other and we're strong for each other. That's the only way we can get by and because of God. What about your grandchildren? Do you hope to have a relationship at some point with them? Right now I think it's best the way that it is. I don't see him coming around. And we have to accept it and just go on. Just days after the verdict, I visited with Michael's parents. His stepfather, Ed, took me to a special place they've created to honor their son's memory. This is a memorial to Michael. Yeah.

Not able to get up there to his grave site enough. So I said, well, you know, keep it, you know, right here close. Anytime we want to go, we can just come up here. What do you think about when you come out here and sit on that bench? When Don and I sometimes we kind of sit around down here, there'll be like a butterfly that'll come around. And I told Don, I said, well, I said, there's little Michael. So we've got a little cut out flower over there that he's always down here. Such an emotional story to report on, David.

Those heartbroken parents placing a memorial bench where they can always remember their son Michael. We should note tonight that Natalie Cochran does plan to appeal her murder conviction. In the meantime, that is our program for tonight. I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts. From all of us here at 20-20 and ABC News, good night.