Despite ‘clean bill of health’ for some medical issues, ‘Fat Leonard’ stayed out of jail

In late 2020, Leonard Francis was presented a “clean invoice of health” by a doctor who had been dealing with the notorious Malaysian defense contractor for much more than two many years, beneath an uncommon health-related furlough that had stored him out of jail to acquire therapy.

Regardless of that pronouncement in November 2020, Francis — the mastermind of a big corruption scandal that rocked the U.S. Navy and defrauded taxpayers out of tens of millions of pounds — ongoing to prevent federal lock-up, residing at periods palatially beneath residence arrest with his personal paid out protection until Sept. 4.

That’s when the 6-foot, 2-inch Francis, nicknamed “Fat Leonard” for his 300-furthermore pound girth, sliced off a GPS ankle bracelet he experienced worn considering the fact that 2018, and went on the operate.

Two months immediately after the spectacular escape, the whereabouts of Francis stay not known. Federal authorities feel he slipped throughout the U.S-Mexico border and have available a $40,000 reward for his arrest.

Now, the history of his strange health care furlough has develop into much more urgent, not only in gentle of his escape, but also in the aftermath of a demo of four Navy officers lately convicted of accepting bribes.

Attorneys for the four, who were being convicted at a demo that ended in June, submitted a motion on Friday demanding all details about his health care release. They had sought it for decades just before demo but ended up regularly rebuffed. They finally received redacted files just months in advance of demo.

The legal professionals contend the direct prosecutor on the situation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher, continued to assist retaining Francis outside the house the jail walls for decades — even while Francis was a rich guy with global ties and determination to flee. He experienced pleaded guilty in 2015 to bribery and other expenses.

Leonard Francis, aka “Fat Leonard,” lived in a rented mansion, heart, in the Torrey Highlands neighborhood in San Diego just before he slipped off his GPS ankle bracelet and vanished on the morning of Sept. 4.

(John Gastaldo/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

“This is a international nationwide with no ties to the United States, who has pleaded guilty to many felonies, who has contacts all above the entire world,” reported Joseph Mancano, the lawyer for convicted previous Capt. David Newland. “And they permit him dwell less than people circumstances?”

Specifics at the rear of the healthcare furlough are relevant to Francis’ credibility and “the government’s drive in endorsing Mr. Francis’s unorthodox furlough and the ‘quid professional quo’ scenario it established permitting Mr. Francis is abscond,” they wrote.

Considering the fact that 2018, Francis had been on a clinical furlough since of what seems to be a constellation of medical difficulties that ended up over and above the means of the pretrial detention system to cope with, in accordance to court documents.

The ailments of that release demanded him to have on a GPS ankle bracelet, have a 24-hour safety crew paid out for by Francis, and adhere to strict restrictions on his movements exterior of the personal properties he was living in and presumably renting.

At the time of his escape Francis was residing in a multi-million dollar property in a gated group in San Diego’s Torrey Highlands community. Federal authorities officials, from the court company Pretrial Expert services that was in cost of the arrangement to the U.S. Attorney’s Business office, have all declined to response the a lot of thoughts about how Francis was equipped to escape.

The letter declaring Francis’ “clean monthly bill of health” to U.S. District Choose Janis Sammartino, and how it triggered an crisis hearing known as by the choose, is contained in 327 web pages of court information that ended up sealed till January of this yr.

In accordance to transcripts, Francis’ attorney Devin Burstein instructed the decide the letter was element of a billing dispute with the doctor, who was Francis’ bariatric surgeon. Burstein declined to remark on the letter when arrived at this week.

In an ironic twist, Francis — who experienced pleaded responsible to masterminding a decades-prolonged billing fraud from the U.S. Navy to the tune of tens of hundreds of thousands of bucks — had come to be upset when his relatives auditors arrived to imagine he was becoming overcharged on his very own private healthcare costs. That dispute led to a falling out with the doctor, Burstein advised the choose.

The letter from the medical doctor is a person piece of a puzzle about the condition of Francis’ overall health. There is little question based on the documents launched so significantly that Francis was sick: at some issue he experienced been identified with renal cancer, and the freshly unsealed court data — with all specific health care data redacted — strongly show that for some time starting off in 2018 he was in very poor well being.

Leonard Francis lived in this space on to start with becoming granted health care furlough in 2018, in accordance to a report by federal investigators, included in a court filing. He later moved to a mansion in Torrey Highlands.

(U.S. District Court docket)

But other information outside the house the courtroom document casts his medical challenges in a various gentle. In an interview recorded secretly from his household arrest sometime in 2021 with podcaster Tom Wright, Francis talked about his medicine program and overall health.

Wright questioned him at a person point if his cancer was in remission. “No,” Francis responded, then included, “I have to retain my clinical situation for the reason that that’s what retains me out. Which is why I have my liberty. If I am properly, I am undoubtedly not going to be in this article.”

Issues about Francis’ well being status have come to be more pointed in the earlier two months since his escape. For far more than 4 many years it was a closely guarded solution, discussed only in a lot more than a dozen closed-door, sealed-transcript hearings that Sammartino held.

It also was an difficulty for protection legal professionals representing the group of Navy officers who went on demo before this year. Their attorneys, who experienced been in the dark about Francis’ household arrest preparations and clinical difficulties, experienced long sought far more info.

“I imagined that he was not truthful about the condition of his health,” mentioned Mancano, 1 of the attorneys. “I suggest, a single medical doctor reported he was in great health and fitness.”

The physician who wrote the letter declined to comment for this story. The brief letter was despatched straight to Sammartino on Nov. 24, 2020. “This letter is to notify you that Mr. Leonard Francis has been dismissed from our practice,” it browse. “We desire to congratulate him on his clean bill of wellness.”

An alarmed Sammartino referred to as a hearing 8 days later. She claimed she was involved for the reason that she experienced told other defendants and their attorneys that Francis’ release “has been a reputable medical furlough, and at the position at which it is no more time a authentic professional medical furlough, the courtroom could get a distinct placement.”

Burstein then spelled out that Francis and the medical professional had a dispute around billing. The doctor experienced stopped managing Francis some time earlier — he had, in actuality, not noticed him for months, the law firm mentioned — and Francis had shed religion in the health care provider simply because he imagined he was currently being overbilled.

He said Francis was now beneath the care of a new health care workforce. But that also lifted a issue for Pletcher, the lead prosecutor on all the Navy bribery scandal conditions.

Pletcher explained to the choose he only uncovered out the day ahead of that Francis experienced a new healthcare group and was “dismayed” about the late see.

“If he’s owning a dispute, he’s having some thing that impacts this court’s decision on the clinical furlough, then we have to have to be the 1st men and women to know,” he reported.

He wished the new medical professionals to present a report on Francis’ affliction, with an eye on the require to continue the furlough.

“But definitely what I want to know is, (do) his remedies nevertheless demand this form of healthcare furlough, or is this the kind of cure from an outpatient standpoint that he can get with doctor’s visits to and from the facility?” Pletcher said. “And perhaps with COVID-19, which is not probable, appropriate?”

At the time the virus was surging all over again in the county. A new continue to be-at-household order would be issued inside of days of the hearing, hospitalizations for the virus had been spiking, and circumstance numbers would established everyday documents. Condition and federal jails, wherever the virus could unfold immediately, ended up making an attempt to preserve their populations minimal, so it is unlikely that Francis in his continue to-susceptible well being would be returned to custody.

Nevertheless, at the listening to Pletcher claimed that Francis’ procedure had worked properly, based on the health care data.

“I never want my comments to be shed on what I consider is a incredibly essential underlying topic,” he mentioned, “which is, in examining through all of this, it seems he’s executing very well, and for that I am thankful, and I consider the court is grateful, that all of this has experienced this supposed and hoped-for end result, and I now I speak for anyone here in that we hope for the greatest for Mr. Francis in his health and fitness problem.”

By March Sammartino experienced acquired studies from new medical professionals outlining Francis’ clinical problem. The redacted transcripts get rid of very little gentle on specifically what they had been, but Burstein explained to Sammartino that Francis was in line for a sequence of checks and treatments in the coming weeks.

The new experiences, Pletcher explained, showed Francis was “doing fairly well” and his prognosis great. When Sammartino requested if the professional medical furlough was nevertheless wanted, he answered there was nonetheless “good cause” to maintain Francis in his present residing condition.

And that is the place he stayed until eventually Sept. 4 all over 7:30 a.m., when he cut the keep an eye on and disappeared. It took authorities 8 hours from the time the monitoring device sounded an alert to comprehend he had escaped and start out the manhunt.

Francis was scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday. The listening to is continue to on the calendar, while it is not likely he will be sentenced.

Francis’ plea offer known as for him to forfeit $35 million to the federal government. Although he paid $5 million of that various yrs in the past, he fled with no having compensated out the remainder. He nonetheless owes the federal government $30 million, Mancano claimed.

How extended his sentence was likely to be is mysterious. By cooperating with the authorities Francis was expecting a considerable reduction in the likely 25-year sentence he could have confronted less than the 3 crimes to which he pleaded guilty.

But that agreement is very likely void now. A clause in it suggests by committing approximately a dozen functions, this sort of as not appearing in court or committing new crimes, Francis would be in breach of the offer.

In that case, the government could file any costs “including people that were being dismissed, promised to be dismissed, or not submitted as a end result of this arrangement.”