PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A recently unsealed whistle-blower lawsuit claims a former civilian Navy employee from Virginia and a now-defunct Navy contractor engaged in a bribery and kickback scheme going back to at least 2004.

The lawsuit, first filed in a federal court in Georgia in 2006, predates by more than four years criminal charges brought by federal prosecutors in Rhode Island in 2011 that allege a similar scheme by some of the same people cost the government $10 million.

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