A Malaysian contractor at the center of the worst US Navy corruption scandal escaped house arrest in California over the weekend after cutting off his GPS anklet, federal agents said.
Leonard Francis, known as “Fat Leonard”, who admitted to offering $ 500,000 in bribes to US Navy officers, would have fled before his sentence in three weeks.
Police found his home in the empty city of San Diego on Sunday morning.
Francis was arrested in 2013, accused of bribing navy officers with cash, expensive food and cigars, rare cognac and wild sex parties at luxury hotels in exchange for contracts.
Two years later he pleaded guilty to bribing navy officials as part of a massive fraud and bribery scheme involving his naval services company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, in Singapore.
Prosecutors said he also redirected military ships to profitable ports for his company and overloaded the US military with more than $ 35 million for services.
Local officials and the Naval Criminal Investigation Service are now known to be looking for him.
US Deputy Supervisor Marshal Omar Castillo told the San Diego Union-Tribune, a local newspaper, “He was planning it, that’s for sure.”
Francis’s neighbors have reportedly seen U-Haul move trucks in and out of his home in the past few days.
Francis had suffered from health problems in recent years and was placed under house arrest in 2018 while collaborating with investigators and serving as a witness for the prosecution.
He was to be sentenced on September 22nd.
The United States Department of Justice had previously called Francis’s plan a colossal fraud.
Subsequently they reported more than 30 others.
Many of the accused pleaded guilty or were sentenced to trial.
