The wealthy Malaysian contractor at the center of one of the United States Navy’s longest-running bribery scandals cut off his ankle monitor while under house arrest and was on the run from federal authorities today, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

Leonard Glenn Francis, who is known as Fat Leonard, was less than three weeks away from his sentencing date when he cut off his GPS anklet on Sunday morning and fled his home in San Diego, according to Omar Castillo, a supervisory deputy U.S. marshal.

Pretrial services, which was monitoring the device, notified the San Diego Police Department and the Marshals Service, Castillo said.

Neighbors told the Marshals Service that they had seen U-Haul trucks going in and out of Francis’ house in the days leading up to his escape, “showing that someone had been in the process of moving,” Castillo said.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Francis had been living in a multimillion-dollar home in a gated community that, according to real estate websites, has five bedrooms and seven bathrooms. He had been living with his three children, and the authorities believe he fled with them, Castillo said.

“Right now, we have a few different leads,” Castillo said today. “We are looking internationally. I can’t say much more than that right now.”

Francis, 57, was scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, in San Diego, court records show. He had been facing up to 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty in 2015 to conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to defraud the United States and had agreed to forfeit $35 million in gains.

Francis has been at the heart of a long-running fraud and bribery case that has resulted in federal criminal charges against more than 30 U.S. Navy officials and defense contractors, according to the Justice Department.

As of January, more than two dozen people had pleaded guilty in the scheme, admitting that they had collectively accepted millions of dollars in luxury travel and accommodations, meals or the services of prostitutes from Francis. In exchange, they helped his company win contracts and overbill the Navy by more than $35 million, prosecutors said.

Court records released in 2015 said that Francis’ gifts to Navy officials included more than $500,000 in cash and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the services of prostitutes as well as in travel expenses. He also provided Navy officials with gifts like Cuban cigars, Spanish-style roast suckling pigs and ornamental swords.

Francis had been the chief executive of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, a multinational corporation based in Singapore that supplied the Navy with items and services for ships and submarines when they arrived at ports. He was arrested in 2013 and had been cooperating with the authorities.

In 2017, Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau, the first admiral to be convicted of a federal crime while on active duty, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for lying to investigators about his involvement in the scandal.

Prosecutors said that Gilbeau had approved invoices that grossly overbilled the Navy and had destroyed documents and computer files after Francis was arrested.

Court officials had previously raised concerns about security at Francis’ home. In December 2020, Judge Janis Sammartino held a hearing on the issue after a pretrial services official reported that there had been no security guard at his residence in the middle of the day.

“I’m so sorry for what has happened, and I just want to let you know that this will never happen again,” Francis said at the hearing, according to court records. “I’ve always been clear with my pretrial arrangements, and I’ve always been here and I just want to apologize.”

Sammartino said she appreciated Francis’ comments.

“I don’t think there’s anything, you know, untoward that was being plotted here or anything,” she said, according to the records.

Mark W. Pletcher, a federal prosecutor, reminded those at the hearing that there was supposed to be round-the-clock security at the house.

“There’s nothing about the court’s order that is discretionary,” he said, according to the records. “Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week means what it says, and anything short of that is not in compliance.”

Castillo said there was no security guard at the home when the Marshals Service responded to Francis’ escape on Sunday.

Francis has a history of health problems, according to court records. He was undergoing treatment for renal cancer in 2018, and was in what his lawyer, Devin Burstein, had described as “the danger zone,” court records show. He also had unspecified chronic health conditions.

Burstein declined to comment today.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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