West Virginia’s Raleigh County is a largely rural region nestled in the coal mining country of the Appalachian Mountains, celebrated for its natural beauty and rugged snowy terrain. However, the picturesque landscapes concealed the dark secrets of one woman that threatened to upend a close-knit community.
In February 2019, 38-year-old Michael Cochran died suddenly. Prosecutors said his wife Natalie Cochran poisoned him with insulin to conceal her over $2 million Ponzi scheme, which she operated from 2017 to 2019.
Natalie was already serving an 11-year sentence after pleading guilty in 2020 to federal wire fraud and money laundering when she was charged with murder in November 2021.
PHOTO: Natalie and Michael Cochran are seen in this undated photo. (Courtesy Daphne Jessup)
She was found guilty of first-degree murder on Jan. 29, 2025, in Raleigh County Circuit Court, and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
A new “20/20” episode, “Small Town, Big Con,” airing Friday, Feb. 14, at 9 p.m. ET and streaming the next day on Hulu, examines the murder of Michael Cochran.
Natalie’s scheme began after the Cochrans registered a new company called Tactical Solutions Group (TSG) in 2017. They said it focused on bidding on contracts to sells weapons and other goods to the U.S. government.
She quit her job as a pharmacist and fully committed herself to the family business. She was the majority owner, while Michael held the minority stake.
PHOTO: Michael Cochran is seen in this undated photo. (Courtesy Donna and Ed Bolt)
Natalie approached friends and family to invest money in the company. She convinced some of them to make six-figure investments, drawn by the promise of generous profits on high-dollar government contracts.
Natalie told friends the business model was inspired by the 2016 dark comedy movie “War Dogs,” which stars Jonah Hill and Miles Teller as men who deal arms to the U.S. military despite lacking experience in the defense industry.
“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?'” Toni McCall, an investor, told “20/20.”
McCall didn’t know at the time that her comment would foreshadow the future.
PHOTO: Natalie Cochran is seen on day one of her trial on January 15, 2025. (Pool/ABC News)
By all outward appearances, Natalie and Michael’s new business was thriving, with family and friends noticing that their lifestyle seemed to transform almost overnight.
The Cochrans acquired real estate, eventually owning three homes, as well as several vehicles, including motorcycles and an antique car. The family went on vacations to Paris and Hawaii.
On an application for a $100,000 loan from a local bank, Natalie and Michael reported their business assets exceeded $500 million.
“We just thought it was wonderful,” Donna Bolt, Michael’s mother, told ABC News. “We just thought they were doing so good that we were so proud of them.”
PHOTO: Nicole Cochran takes the stand during her mother’s trial on January 23, 2025. (Pool/ABC News)
Questions began to arise after an investigation was launched into funds missing from a middle school baseball league. That league raised $15,000 through a fundraiser and Natalie, as its treasurer, oversaw the bank accounts.
Members of the league committee became suspicious when almost all the money disappeared from the account. Private investigator James Quesenberry was hired to track down the missing funds.
“There were purchases to TJ Maxx, purchases to Olive Garden,” Quesenberry said. “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.”
According to Quesenberry, Natalie was the only person with access to the bank accounts. This raised concerns for some members of the league who were also investors in Natalie and Michael’s government contracting business.
PHOTO: Natalie Cochran is seen on day nine of her trial as the judge reads the jury’s verdict. (Pool/ABC News)
When investors questioned her about returns they had been promised, they said Natalie offered a variety of excuses for the delayed payments, including a federal government shutdown and cancer treatments she claimed to be undergoing.
The Cochran business wasn’t what it appeared to be, and people were starting to catch on. When the secrets behind the scheme were uncovered, things became much worse than anyone could have ever imagined.
Tactical Solutions Group turned out to be a major deception.
There were no government contracts; there were never any contracts. There were never any bids. The company existed only on paper. It was a Ponzi scheme. No money was being generated. Early investors were paid with funds from new investors.
The Cochran business model appeared to be based on defrauding friends and family, many of whom have known Natalie and Michael their entire lives.
PHOTO: “20/20” Co-Anchor Deborah Roberts speaks with Donna and Ed Bolt about memories of their son, Michael Cochran. (ABC News)
“It would hurt a lot less for this to have been someone that I didn’t know that had scammed me out of money,” McCall said. “It would hurt a lot less knowing that I was already wounded from my husband passing away and my kids the same.”
Investigators believed that Michael didn’t know that Natalie was scamming people — and that he asked her the same questions as investors who were trying to get their money back. They claimed that he believed they had government contracts and money due, and that the government was holding their money.
On the morning of Feb. 6, 2019, the Cochrans planned to fly to Virginia for a meeting with representatives from Bank of America. The trip never happened. Natalie told friends that she was sick with the flu and texted a photo of Michael unconscious in the kitchen of the family’s home.
As friends came to the Cochran home to check on Michael, Natalie downplayed the severity of the situation and insisted that he just needed to sleep it off. They urged her to take him to a hospital, but she said that Michael didn’t want to go to the hospital.
After several hours, an unresponsive Michael was finally taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors determined that he was suffering from cerebral edema — a swelling of the brain. His blood glucose level was 21, a dangerously low reading.
Michael received treatment for five days but never regained consciousness. Michael died at a hospice in Beckley, West Virginia, on Feb. 11.
The newly widowed Natalie continued to run the business. Four months after her husband’s death, she arranged a deal to sell nearly half of Tactical Solutions Group for $4 million.
However, on June 25, 2019, before the sale could proceed, police executed a search warrant on the Cochran residence. They had been tipped off about TSG after speaking with an investor who complained about not being able to recover his investment.
“We had more than enough evidence and documentation to proceed with indictment,” detective Tim Bledsoe said.
Natalie faced 26 charges related to the fraud. She pleaded not guilty, but her investors feared they would never recover the hundreds of thousands of dollars they had put into the business.
“Almost a quarter of a million dollars over the course of two-and-a-half years,” Bolt, Michael’s mother, said. “We loved her and we believed her. Everything she told us, we believed everything she said to us.”
After pleading guilty in 2020 to an unlawful monetary transaction and to wire fraud related to the Ponzi scheme, Natalie was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison and ordered to pay back the $2.5 million she stole from investors.
Natalie called the alleged financial crimes related to the little league bogus, and ultimately, authorities decided not to charge her with anything related to the little league.
With the federal case against TSG settled, a state investigation into Michael’s unexplained death began to heat up. Detectives originally thought Michael died from natural causes. However, after a search warrant in the fraud case led investigators to the Cochran home, they unexpectedly found a vial of insulin in the fridge. This led detectives to look into Michael’s death deeper.
A judge granted an order to exhume his remains for examination and testing. In November 2021, just six months into her prison term, Natalie was indicted for first-degree murder.
At her trial, state prosecutors alleged that Natalie injected Michael with insulin, a diabetes medicine that can cause life-threatening complications if not used properly. Prosecutors argued and investigators testified that Natalie killed Michael to prevent her Ponzi scheme from being exposed at a bank meeting scheduled the day Michael fell ill. They asserted that Michael was not involved in the Ponzi scheme and that he believed their business to be legitimate.
Natalie’s defense attorneys argued that while she may have taken millions in the Ponzi scheme, she did not kill Michael, who they claimed was not in good health and took insulin as part of his body building efforts.
Natalie’s attorneys said that she plans to appeal her conviction.
How far would a wife go to keep $2M Ponzi scheme a secret? originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
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