Leonard Glenn Francis, known as Fat Leonard, the man convicted in the largest fraud case in US Navy history, is on the waddle after cutting off his monitoring ankle bracelet and fleeing his San Diego home weeks before his sentencing hearing, The Guardian reports.
Francis would ply naval officers with alcohol, women, cigars and fine dining to get them to reroute ships to ports where his organization, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, a ship support company, ran operations. He would then get classified information about ship routes and schedules so he could bribe officials to send Navy vessels, including aircraft carriers, to his ports so he could overcharge for items like fuel, food and other operational material his company would provide to resupply the ships in port.
US Marshals who went to Francis’s San Diego home found his ankle bracelet had been removed and smashed, with Francis’s personal items gone. Francis was scheduled to be sentenced September 22nd.
Federal prosecutors charged 33 people in the scheme that would ultimately net Francis, who oversaw the operations at more than a dozen ports around Asia, more than $35 million personally and hundreds of millions of dollars for his company from the 2000s to around 2013, when an investigation was first launched. He used more than half a million dollars to bribe US Navy officials and officers, and he provided officers with prostitutes, luxury vacations, Cuban cigars and other gifts. Twenty-two people, including Leonard, pleaded guilty to charges. Ten uniformed naval officers and seven civilian navy officials also pleaded guilty.