SAN DIEGO– Former military defense contractor Leonard “Fat Leonard” Franciscus was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in prison for masterminding a decade-long bribery scheme that left dozens of U.S. Navy officers dead, federal prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge Janis L. Sammartino also ordered Francis to pay $20 million in restitution to the Navy and a $150,000 fine, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He was also ordered to forfeit $35 million in “ill-gotten proceeds from his crimes,” the statement said.
Prosecutors said the sentence follows Francis’ first guilty plea in 2015 on bribery and fraud charges, his extensive cooperation with the government since then and another guilty plea Tuesday for failing to appear for his original sentencing hearing in 2022.
Shortly before he was to be sentenced in September 2022, Francis disabled a GPS monitor he was wearing while under house arrest and fled the country. He was later arrested in Venezuela and returned to the US in December 2023.
Sammartino sentenced him to more than 13.5 years for bribery and fraud, plus 16 months for failure to appear. The sentences must be served consecutively.
“Leonard Francis has lined his pockets with taxpayer dollars while undermining the integrity of the United States Navy,” U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath said in Tuesday’s statement. “The impact of his deception and manipulation will be felt for a long time, but today justice was served.”
Email and phone messages seeking comment were left Tuesday for William Douglas Sprague, an attorney for Francis.
Sprague, who asked for a sentence of just under nine years, argued that his client’s cooperation should justify a lesser sentence. 10 News San Diego reported.
Sprague also said Francis’ company has provided exemplary service to the Navy for years.
“Unfortunately, as Leonard acknowledged in his early guilty plea and immediate cooperation, his greed drove him to commit bribery and fraud,” Sprague said.
Prosecutors said Francis’ actions led to one of the largest bribery investigations in U.S. military history, which resulted in the conviction and sentencing of nearly two dozen Navy officials, defense contractors and others on various charges of fraud and corruption .
Francis was an enigmatic figure standing six feet tall and once weighing 350 pounds. He owned and operated his family’s ship maintenance company, Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd. or GDMA, which supplied food, water and fuel to ships. The Malaysian defense contractor was a key point of contact for U.S. Navy ships in ports throughout Asia for more than two decades. During that time, Francis robbed Navy officers with Kobe beef, expensive cigars, concert tickets and wild sex parties at luxury hotels from Thailand to the Philippines.
In return, officers, including the first active-duty admiral to be convicted of a federal crime, hid the scheme under which Francis would overcharge for ship supplies or bogus services at ports he controlled in Southeast Asia. The officers passed him classified information and even went so far as to divert military ships to ports that were lucrative for his Singapore-based ship maintenance business.
In a federal sting, Francis was lured to San Diego under false pretenses and arrested at a hotel in September 2013. In 2015, he pleaded guilty and admitted to offering more than $500,000 in cash bribes to Navy officials, defense contractors and others. Prosecutors say he cheated the Navy out of at least $35 million. As part of his plea deal, he cooperated with the investigation that led to the Navy convictions. He faced a prison sentence of up to 25 years.
While awaiting sentencing, Francis was hospitalized and treated for kidney cancer and other medical problems. After leaving the hospital, he was allowed to stay out of jail in a rental home, under house arrest with a GPS ankle monitor and guards.
But three weeks before his scheduled sentencing in September 2022, he cut off his monitor and made a brazen escape, sparking an international search. Officials said he fled to Mexico, went to Cuba and eventually ended up in Venezuela.
That was him arrested more than two weeks after his disappearance – caught before boarding a flight at Simon Bolivar International Airport outside Caracas. Venezuelan officials said he planned to reach Russia.
The cases were handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in an effort to be independent of the military justice system. But they have come under scrutiny.
The felony convictions of four former Navy officers were vacated following allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. Sammartino agreed that they would plead guilty to a misdemeanor and each pay a $100 fine.
Last year, Sammartino ruled that the lead prosecutor in the officers’ case had committed “egregious misconduct” by withholding information from lawyers, but that this was not enough to dismiss the case.