Iconfess that I'd lost track of Fat Leonard, and I sure as hell didn't know he was in a Venezuelan hoosegow. Now, as part of a massive prisoner exchange, Fat Leonard is coming to an American cell. From the Washington Post:

The Venezuelan government agreed to turn over Leonard Glenn Francis, the 59-year-old Malaysian citizen who escaped U.S. custody days before he was to be sentenced last year in the biggest military corruption scandal in the nation’s history, President Biden said on Wednesday...Francis, a 59-year-old Malaysian citizen, was the owner of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, a Singapore-based company that held $250 million in U.S. defense contracts to resupply and service U.S. Navy ships in ports throughout Asia.
An inveterate charmer, Francis wined and dined hundreds of U.S. Navy officers at Asia’s finest restaurants over a quarter-century, lavishing them with Cuban cigars and Cristal champagne during port calls in Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and Bangkok. In exchange, federal prosecutors say, the brass looked the other way while he gouged the Navy for fuel, water, ship repairs and sewage removal, defrauding U.S. taxpayers of an estimated $50 million. Francis’s most effective tactic was to bribe Navy officers with prostitutes, he told federal investigators. At least 10 Navy sailors leaked him classified information about U.S. ship movements in the Pacific, most in exchange for sex, court records show.

Sailors began calling him "Fat Leonard" because Francis once tipped the scale at five bills. Francis didn't care because he'd found a universe of seagoing suckers.

Much more than a contracting scandal, the investigation has revealed how Francis seduced the Navy’s storied 7th Fleet, long a proving ground for admirals given its strategic role in patrolling the Pacific and Indian oceans. In perhaps the worst national-security breach of its kind to hit the Navy since the end of the Cold War, Francis doled out sex and money to a shocking number of people in uniform who fed him classified material about U.S. warship and submarine movements. Some also leaked him confidential contracting information and even files about active law enforcement investigations into his company. He exploited the intelligence for illicit profit, brazenly ordering his moles to redirect aircraft carriers to ports he controlled in Southeast Asia so he could more easily bilk the Navy for fuel, tugboats, barges, food, water and sewage removal.

Shame was not in Fat Leonard's game.

Later that year, on Christmas Eve, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and three other warships arrived in Hong Kong. Francis threw a Christmas party for the visiting officers at the Island Shangri-La, a five-star hotel. They were treated to filet mignon, lobster and Dom Pérignon champagne, and they mingled with female escorts dressed as Santa’s little helpers, according to Schaus and a second officer who was present in port. A handful of senior officers were invited to an after-party with the escorts, whom Francis had dubbed the “Santa Niñas,” or Santa’s girls, according to a third individual who was present. The next day, Francis boarded one of the warships and delivered a $600,000 sewage bill...

When Francis was finally busted in an NCIS sting, in 2015, he cut a deal with the prosecutors and sang his heart out. (The Post says he gave up over 600 members of the Navy.) Diagnosed with kidney cancer, he was granted home detention while awaiting sentencing. He took advantage of that to flee the country, bouncing from Mexico, to Cuba, to Venezuela. Now he's coming here. For what does it profit a man to gain a $600K sewage bill, but lose his soul?