A naval officer, who cheated the government out of more than $2.7 million to buy a second home and luxury vehicles and to feed a high-stakes poker habit, has been sentenced to more than four years behind bars.
Lt. Randolph Prince, 45, from Virginia Beach, Va., used his position as a member of Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training and Evaluation Unit 2 to coordinate government contracts of “inert training aids” — fake bombs — with fictitious companies, according to the Virginian-Pilot. The phony companies were created so Prince could award them government contracts.
The deliveries never arrived, and Prince and his co-conspirators created false documentation to show they had been received so the Navy would pick up the tab. Prince used the $2,719,907 he netted from the scheme to purchase luxury vehicles and a second home. Additionally, it supplemented his high-stakes poker habits.
Prince pleaded guilty in August to wire fraud and to making a false statement on his tax returns in 2014. Lt. j.g. Courtney Cloan and former sailor Clayton Pressley III have also pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme.
Prince’s attorney attempted to secure a two-year sentence for him, citing Prince’s long military career. Prince first enlisted in the military in 1991 and became a commissioned officer in 2008.
“It’s a shame that he squandered an otherwise outstanding 27-year Naval career,” defense attorney Shawn Cline, who is representing Prince, told the Virginian-Pilot. “He suffered from a terrible gambling addiction and abused a position of trust to fuel that addiction.”
“When his time in service is remembered, it won’t be for the fact that he rose from the lowest enlisted ranks to the grade of Lieutenant, or that he served in a dangerous war zone in direct combat when his nation needed him most. It will be the events of this sentencing hearing that are his legacy,” Cline said. “Rather than being something with which he can look back on with pride, he will spend the rest of his life hoping that the people with whom he interacts are not aware of the time he spent serving in the Navy.”
In addition to the prison sentence, Prince was ordered to pay back the $2,719,907.
