SAN DIEGO >> The U.S. government posted a $40,000 reward Friday for information leading to the arrest of the Malaysian defense contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard,” who disappeared weeks before he was set to be sentenced for one of the largest bribery scandals in the nation’s military history.

Leonard Glenn Francis cut off his ankle monitoring bracelet around 7:35 a.m. Sunday at a San Diego home where he was being held, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Neighbors reported seeing U-Haul trucks coming and going from the home days before he disappeared. Francis had been allowed to remain in home confinement to receive medical care while he cooperated with the prosecution.

With help from Francis, prosecutors secured convictions of 33 of 34 defendants, including more than two dozen Navy officers. Among those caught up in the scandal was a former director of public affairs with U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. In February 2019 retired Navy Capt. Jeffrey Breslau was sentenced in federal court to six months in prison and ordered to pay $85,000 in restitution and fines for secretly moonlighting as a paid public relations consultant for Francis, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Francis pleaded guilty in 2015 to offering prostitution services, luxury hotels, cigars, gourmet meals and more than $500,000 in bribes to Navy officials and others to help his Singaporean- based ship servicing company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., or GDMA. Prosecutors said the company overcharged the Navy by at least $35 million for servicing ships, many of which were routed to ports he controlled in the Pacific.

Ten U.S. agencies are searching for Francis. U.S. authorities also issued a red notice, which asks law enforcement worldwide to provisionally arrest someone with the possibility of extradition. Malaysia and Singapore both have extradition agreements with the United States.

In Breslau’s case, U.S. Attorney Robert S. Brewer Jr. said in a news release that the officer had secretly advocated for Francis “behind the backs of his Navy colleagues,” in deceit that was “part of an astounding culture of corruption that has been exposed and eliminated as a result of this historic investigation.”

Breslau accepted more than $65,000 from Francis without disclosing the agreement to the Navy, according to prosecutors. From October 2009 until July 2012, Breslau was chief of public affairs for U.S. Pacific Fleet, headquartered at Pearl Harbor.

Pleading guilty to a conflict-of-interest charge, Breslau also admitted that from March 2012 until September 2013, he “provided Francis with public relations consulting services, including providing advice on how to respond to issues and controversies related to Francis’s ship husbanding business with the U.S. Navy,” the Justice Department said previously. Those included issues related to port visit costs, allegations of malfeasance such as the unauthorized dumping of waste, disputes with competitors, and issues with Pacific Fleet and contracting personnel, the department said.

The scandal also resulted in two high-profile cases of censure involving officers who had been Hawaii-based. In one case, in spring 2019, Capt. Heedong Choi, a former commander of the Pearl Harbor destroyer USS Chafee, received a scathing censure from Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, accusing him of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in improper gifts from Francis and demonstrating a “higher loyalty” to Francis than to the United States.

According to the Navy, in June 2009, Choi improperly solicited an “elaborate and lavish private dinner” for his marriage proposal plans with a jazz ensemble on the helipad of the Swissotel in Singapore, with Francis and/or his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, footing the $18,000 bill.

Further, Spencer said Choi in 2012 obstructed justice by wrongfully notifying Francis of an ongoing investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Serv­ice and Korean authorities into Glenn Defense’s fraudulent business.

Choi was commanding officer of the Chafee from April 2008 to April 2010. He had previously held the position of executive officer, the No. 2 in command, on the Pearl Harbor-based cruiser USS Lake Erie. From 2010 to 2013 he was a staff officer at U.S. Pacific Command.

On “multiple occasions” between 2008 and 2013, Choi committed graft in wrongfully accepting gifts worth more than $25,000 in exchange for improperly endorsing Glenn Defense, facilitating inappropriate relationships between Francis and other Navy officers, and sharing internal Navy information, the censure states.

In the other censure case, Mark Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral who had last served as U.S. Indo- Pacific Command’s director of operations on Oahu, was censured in November 2018 by Spencer for “repeatedly and improperly” soliciting and accepting gifts from GDMA.

Montgomery provided information to and took action to financially benefit Glenn Defense between 2007 and 2009 when he commanded Destroyer Squadron 15 in the Western Pacific, according to a Navy statement detailing Spencer’s censure.

In light of the connection between the gifts and actions he took, Montgomery committed graft, Spencer determined. In 2018 the retired rear admiral made a false official statement “intending to mislead” the Consolidated Disposition Authority, the Navy said. The authority was created by the Navy in 2014 to review Glenn Defense cases forwarded by the Justice Department that it declined to prosecute in the federal court system.