Fat Leonard's Escape: How a Conman Eluded US Navy and Law Enforcement

A conman known by the nickname “Fat Leonard” has told how he managed not only to embroil the U.S. Navy in a bribery and fraud scandal, but also elude federal law enforcement for more than a year.

“It wasn’t rocket science,” Leonard Glenn Francis, a 61-year-old Malaysian national,told the Washington Post from prison when asked about his escape from federal custody in 2022. “There was a lot of negligence on the government’s part.”

In 2013, Francis was arrested and pleaded guilty to bribery and fraud charges in 2015. He was set to receive his sentence in September 2022, but managed to escape from federal custody after he cut off his house-arrest GPS tracker.

He was eventually arrested while hiding out in Venezuela in 2023. Now, he's hoping to dodge a long prison sentence by way of a pardon from President Donald Trump.

Francis spent more than two decades running a contracting scheme through his defense company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, in which he bribed U.S. Navy officers with luxury items like champagne, Cuban cigars, and five-star hotel stays while over-billing the government on resupply contracts, according to the Post. He overcharged the Navy $35 million for fuel, tugboats, and sewage disposal services.

The investigation into his activities also turned up 10 Navy officers, half of whom who admitted that they leaked classified information to him in exchange for encounters with prostitutes and other bribes. But the felony charges against the officers were later dropped.

Francis told the Post that he managed to get away with his scheme for so long because he focused on “wining and dining” Navy officers. Francis bragged that his methods were an open secret among officers, and that senior officials embraced him because his company controlled $200 million in federal contracts and always delivered on its services.

On the day of his escape, a private security guard who was meant to be watching him was away from his post, allowing Francis the chance to remove the tracker. He called an Uber and was taken from his home in San Diego a half-hour south to the border, where he slipped into Tijuana.

There, he boarded a private jet he had chartered that took him to Havana.

Before leaving his house, Francis left his captors a cheeky farewell; he put a Navy watchman's hat on an Elvis mannequin he kept in his home.

“I did it so they would find Elvis on guard,” he told the Post.

After he arrived in Cuba, he boarded another plane bound for Caracas. He told the Post that when a customs agent in Cuba ran his name through a database, an Interpol alert popped up marking him as a potential criminal, but he managed to board his plane to Venezuela despite the alert.

After arriving in Venezuela, he attempted to gain asylum status with both the Russians and the Venezuelans, but the latter eventually arrested him due to the same Interpol alert that triggered in Cuba.

He told the Post that the Venezuelans weren't sure what to do with him, and argued amongst themselves as to whether he would make a good prisoner for a potential swap with the U.S., or if he was a CIA plant intended to do the nation harm.

Back in 2017, Francis was diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney cancer. Though initially only given months to live, he survived well beyond his prognosis. But his health was deteriorating by the time of his flight from the U.S., and all he wanted to do was return to Malaysia.

“[The Venezuelans] were assessing who I was. Some of them thought I was a CIA officer and called me ‘gringo.’ I said, ‘No, I’m just trying to go home,’” he said.

He was treated for his kidney cancer in Caracas, and was kept in detention until December 2023. Francis said he had heard rumors he might be released, but found himself handed over to U.S. authorities instead.

Unbeknownst to him, the Venezuelan government had been negotiating a prisoner swap with the U.S., with him as a valuable pawn in their plan. He was ultimately handed over to the U.S. Marshals Service in exchange for an ally of then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who had been arrested and was being held in Miami on money laundering charges.

In November 2024, Francis was sentenced to 180 months in prison and ordered to pay $20 million in restitution. He was also forced to forfeit $35 million.

“Mr. Francis’ sentencing brings closure to an expansive fraud scheme … [that] ultimately cost the American taxpayer millions of dollars and weakened the public’s trust in some of our Navy’s senior leaders,” Kelly P. Mayo, director of the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, said in a statement at the time.

Because Francis's time in U.S. and Venezuelan custody counted toward his sentence, he will be released in late 2030, according to the Post. But he fears that his kidney cancer will kill him before his release.

He has appealed for early release due to his condition, but that appeal was denied in January.

The felon hopes that Trump might pardon him, but a White House official cast doubt over the request.

“The White House is not tracking this individual’s supposed request,” the official told the newspaper. “President Trump is the ultimate decision-maker on all clemency-related actions.”