The man who seduced the 7th Fleet The Washington Post
By: Graig Whitlock
27 May 2016
For months, a small team of U.S. Navy investigators and federal
prosecutors secretly devised options for a high-stakes international
manhunt. Could the target be snatched from his home base in Asia and
rendered to the United States? Or held captive aboard an American
warship?
Making the challenge even tougher was the fact that the man was a
master of espionage. His moles had burrowed deep into the Navy
hierarchy to leak him a stream of military secrets, thwarting previous
efforts to bring him to justice.
The target was not a terrorist, nor a spy for a foreign power, nor the
kingpin of a drug cartel. But rather a 350-pound defense contractor
nicknamed Fat Leonard, who had befriended a generation of Navy leaders
with cigars and liquor whenever they made port calls in Asia.
Leonard Glenn Francis was legendary on the high seas for his charm and
his appetite for excess. For years, the Singapore-based businessman had
showered Navy officers with gifts, epicurean dinners, prostitutes and,
if necessary, cash bribes so they would look the other way while he
swindled the Navy to refuel and resupply its ships.
In the end, federal agents settled on a risky sting operation to try to
nab Fat Leonard. They would lure him to California, dangling a meeting
with admirals who hinted they had lucrative contracts to offer.
He took the bait. On Sept. 16, 2013, Francis was arrested in his hotel
suite overlooking San Diego’s harbor. It was the opening strike in a
sweep covering three states and seven countries, as hundreds of law
enforcement agents arrested other suspects and seized incriminating
files from Francis’s business empire.
A 51-year-old Malaysian citizen, Francis has since pleaded guilty to
fraud and bribery charges. His firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, is
financially ruined.
But his arrest exposed something else that is still emerging three
years later: a staggering degree of corruption within the Navy itself.
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.
Over at least a decade, according to documents filed by prosecutors,
Glenn Defense ripped off the Navy with little fear of getting caught
because Francis had so thoroughly infiltrated the ranks.
The company forged invoices, falsified quotes and ran kickback schemes.
It created ghost subcontractors and fake port authorities to fool the
Navy into paying for services it never received.
Francis and his firm have admitted to defrauding the Navy of $35
million, though investigators believe the real amount could be much
greater.
“I ask, when has something like this, bribery of this magnitude, ever
happened in this district or in our country’s history?” Robert Huie, an
assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego, said during a court hearing last
year. “Mr. Francis’s conduct has passed from being merely exceptional
to being the stuff of history and legend.”
The scope of the investigation
Authorities in the United States and Singapore have filed criminal
charges against 14 people so far. Prosecutors say 200 people are under
scrutiny, but only a few have been named publicly. About 30 admirals
are under investigation.
Today, the Navy remains in the grip of overlapping civilian and
military investigations that are slowly unraveling long skeins of
misconduct.
So far, four Navy officers, an enlisted sailor and a senior agent with
the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) have pleaded guilty to
federal crimes and are already behind bars or are facing prison time.
So have Francis and two other Glenn Defense executives.
On Friday, three more current and former Navy officers were charged in
federal court with corruption-related offenses. Charges are also
pending against two former Navy contracting officials who were arrested
last year. Many others remain under investigation.
Exactly how many is a mystery. When he pleaded guilty, Francis admitted
to bribing “scores” of Navy officials with cash, sex and gifts worth
millions of dollars — all so he could win more defense contracts and
overcharge with impunity.
A federal prosecutor hinted at the extent of the case last year when he
said in court that more than 200 “subjects” were under investigation.
A striking portion of the Navy’s senior brass could be tarnished. In
December, Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, summoned
about 200 admirals to a special gathering in Washington.
Without naming names, he revealed that about 30 of them were under
criminal investigation by the Justice Department or ethical scrutiny by
the Navy for their connections to Francis, according to two senior Navy
officials with direct knowledge of the meeting.
The damage to the Navy could match the toll from the Tailhook scandal
of the early 1990s, when 14 admirals were reprimanded or forced to
resign over an epic outbreak of sexual assault at a naval aviators’
convention.
Because all but five of the 14 defendants charged in the Fat Leonard
case have pleaded guilty, and no trials have taken place, only a small
fraction of the evidence has been made public so far.
Leonard Francis President and chief executive officer, Glenn Defense Marine Asia
Status:
Pleaded guilty in January 2015 to bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Punishment:
Sentence pending.
Has
admitted to bribing ‘scores’ of Navy officials with millions of dollars
so they would leak him classified and confidential information about
Navy operations, which he used in turn to gouge the Navy for port
services.
This account of how Francis corrupted the Navy is based on interviews
with more than two dozen current and former Navy officials, as well as
hundreds of pages of court filings, contracting records and military
documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Ethan Posner, an attorney for Francis, declined to comment. The Navy
declined interview requests and referred questions to the Justice
Department.
Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California
whose office is leading the investigation, declined to answer
questions. “The investigation continues apace, uncovering substantial
wrongdoing,” she said in a brief statement.
The investigation has mushroomed partly because Glenn Defense was a
pillar of U.S. maritime operations for a quarter-century.The 7th Fleet
depended on the firm more than any other to refuel and resupply its
vessels.
Over time, Francis became so skilled at cultivating Navy informants
that it was a challenge to juggle them all. On a near-daily basis, they
pelted him with demands for money, prostitutes, hotel rooms and plane
tickets.
“The Soviets couldn’t have penetrated us better than Leonard Francis,”
said a retired Navy officer who worked closely with Francis and spoke
on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal. “He’s got people
skills that are off the scale. He can hook you so fast that you don’t
see it coming. . . . At one time he had infiltrated the entire
leadership line. The KGB could not have done what he did.”
Living large
Leonard Francis grew up in a prosperous family in Penang, Malaysia,
enriched by the maritime logistics firm his maternal grandfather had
started in 1946 along the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest
shipping lanes.
Although Francis came from wealth and was tutored in private schools, he bore scars from a dysfunctional childhood.
His mother had split from his philandering father. She took her
daughter and another son with her, leaving Leonard behind “with the
bizarre task of keeping an eye on his father to ensure that he did not
bring other women home,” according to a summary of Malaysian court
records published in a national law journal.
In 1986, a 21-year-old Francis got into serious legal trouble. He
opened a pub that was “frequented by undesirable characters” in Penang
and was arrested after police found two Smith & Wesson revolvers,
14 rounds of ammunition and a bulletproof vest in his bedroom,
according to the court records. He pleaded guilty.
Under Malaysia’s strict gun laws, he was supposed to receive a
mandatory whipping and a prison sentence. The trial judge imposed a
$5,800 fine but spared him the whipping and incarceration, citing a
psychiatrist’s testimony that he was obese, emotionally fragile and
suffering from a blood disorder. His estranged parents jointly paid the
fine.
Apparently angry at the light sentence, however, police rearrested
Francis as he was leaving the courthouse and charged him with
committing a string of robberies, a Malaysian newspaper reported at the
time.
The robbery charges were dropped. But after an appeal by prosecutors, a
court stiffened Francis’s sentence for the gun crimes, ordering him to
spend 18 months behind bars and submit to six strokes of the lash.
After absorbing his punishment, Francis devoted himself to the family
business. There was money to be made working for the U.S. military,
especially after the Navy was forced to shutter its giant Subic Bay
base in the Philippines in 1992 and stepped up port visits elsewhere.
Lacking knowledge to navigate the byzantine world of U.S. defense
contracts, Francis hired people who did: several former Navy officers,
as well as retired brass from the Malaysian, Thai and Philippine navies.
Francis soaked up military culture from the veterans on his payroll. He
learned Navy lingo and wore neckties emblazoned with the American flag.
His cellphone played country singer Lee Greenwood’s rendition of “God
Bless the U.S.A.”
He moved his headquarters to Singapore and opened branches all over
Asia. By the early 2000s, he had secured contracts to service U.S. Navy
ships in ports from Vladivostok, Russia, to Papua New Guinea. He also
won business from the navies of Britain, France, Mexico, India and the
Netherlands.
At its height, Glenn Defense and its subsidiaries boasted a fleet of
more than 50 vessels. Most were tugs and barges, but the firm also
advertised the services of a patrol ship with armed guards —
British-trained Gurkha soldiers from Nepal — to fend off pirates.
After he moved to Singapore, Francis projected the image of a wildly
successful tycoon. As he rode around the city, bystanders would gawk at
his black, armored SUV with the puncture-resistant tires.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, hundreds of people would pass by
his 70,000-square-foot estate, marveling at the spectacular
holiday-light extravaganza his staff erected each year.
A Singapore newspaper estimated that he spent $75,000 on the light
show, with its life-size reindeer, giant snowmen, 35-foot-tall
Christmas tree and a Nativity scene. A Roman Catholic, Francis
encouraged the publicity but politely declined to say how much the
decorations cost.
“You can’t put a value on happiness,” he told the Straits Times of Singapore.
‘Top-notch hospitality’
In his dealings with the Americans, Francis went to great lengths to
ingratiate himself with senior officers, recognizing that they often
cared more about high-quality service than how the bill would be paid.
Whenever a Navy vessel arrived in port, the odds were high that Francis
would be waiting at the pier. Like a five-star concierge, he would
arrange for shopping trips, sightseeing tours and concert tickets. A
limousine and driver would be reserved for the ship’s commander.
Select sailors would be invited to an extravagant banquet, featuring
cognac and whiskey, Cohiba cigars from Cuba, and platters of Spanish
suckling pig and Kobe beef. Francis would sometimes fly in a band of
pole dancers, which he called his Elite Thai SEAL Team, for X-rated
shows, court records show.
In another display of panache, he purchased an aging, decommissioned
British warship, the RFA Sir Lancelot. He refurbished and renamed it
the Glenn Braveheart.
The vessel became the flagship of his fleet, and it would often deploy
alongside the USS Blue Ridge, the 7th Fleet’s flagship. When in port,
Francis would sometimes turn the Braveheart into a giant party boat,
with prostitutes in the wardroom to entertain U.S. officers, according
to court records and interviews.
Even when he didn’t offer anything illicit, Francis earned a reputation
as a reliable and responsive businessman who was eager to help the Navy
in unfamiliar locales.
Soon enough, senior officers were dashing off ebullient thank-you notes known as Bravo Zulus, a Navy term meaning “well done.”
A 2006 laudatory ''Bravo Zulu'' note from then-Vice Adm. Jonathan Greenert.
• “Many of crew are still talking about the great adventures they
experienced,” then-Capt. John J. Donnelly, then 7th Fleet chief of
staff, said in a March 10, 2000, letter. He lauded Francis’s “warm
hospitality,” calling it “truly remarkable” and that it “will long be
remembered by all of us.” Donnelly would become a three-star admiral
and commander of all U.S. submarine forces.
Now retired, Donnelly said he had no memory of ever meeting Francis and
that the letter was “a pro forma thank you note” generated by his
staff. “I probably signed hundreds of similar letters during my two
years in that job,” he added.
• “Dear Leonard,” wrote then-Vice Adm. Robert F. Willard, then the 7th
Fleet commander, on June 3, 2003. “Thank you for the top-notch
hospitality. Your timely efforts and service will remain unparalleled.”
Willard would become a four-star admiral and commander of all U.S.
military forces in the Pacific. Now retired, he declined to comment.
• “Thank you for the superb services,” gushed then-Vice Adm. Jonathan
Greenert, the next commander of the 7th Fleet, on March 9, 2006. “Over
the years, the reputation of Glenn Marine remains exceptional. . . .
Keep up the great work. I wish you and your staff the very best and
continued success!” Greenert would become chief of naval operations,
the top job in the Navy. He retired last year and declined to comment.
Francis treated the Bravo Zulu notes as celebrity endorsements, highlighting them in company brochures.
To further advertise his access to the highest levels of command, he
published an array of grip-and-grin photographs featuring him alongside
the Navy’s top admirals in their dress-white uniforms.
One brochure, published in 2008, shows Francis, smiling, in a collage
of photos with Greenert and Willard and Adm. Sam Locklear, who later
became commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific.
And with Adm. Mike Mullen, a chief of naval operations who became
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And with Adm. Gary Roughead,
another chief of naval operations.
All have since retired. Locklear and Roughead declined to comment.
Sally Donnelly, an adviser to Mullen, issued a statement on his behalf
saying that he appeared in thousands of informal photographs a year
with people, many of whom he did not know.
“Admiral Mullen had no — and has no — personal or professional
connection to the individual in this photograph, nor has anyone even
suggested that he is in any way party to the activities for which this
individual is being investigated,” she said.
Another retired admiral, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of the ongoing investigations, recalled how he once attended an
officers’ dinner with Francis. He said he complimented the contractor
on his fashionable, bespoke suit and his “blowtorch of a cigar lighter.”
The next morning, as the admiral’s ship was preparing to leave port,
Francis arrived at the pier bearing gifts: a $700 cigar lighter like
the one he showed off the night before; two pewter platters worth about
$500 apiece; a pack of 25 Cuban Cohiba cigars; and a business card for
his bespoke tailor.
The admiral said he declined the presents. “There’s no question in my
mind that he tried to influence me,” he said. “It’s like fishing. He’s
got the hook. If he got an inch, he’d go for a foot. If he’d get a
foot, he’d go for a yard.”
Glenn Defense also would dispense its largesse under the guise of
charity. The firm became a leading sponsor of the Navy League of the
United States, a civilian nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of
the Navy.
At one military ball organized by the league’s Singapore chapter, Glenn
Defense donated the top door prize: a pair of his and hers gold Rolex
watches, valued at $30,000, according to two individuals who were
present.
‘Everyone knew’
Francis didn’t hesitate to exploit his connections, especially when
lower-ranking officers challenged his exorbitant bills, according to
several current and former Navy officers and court documents.
David Schaus, a junior officer assigned to the Navy’s Ship Support
Office in Hong Kong, became livid after receiving a huge invoice from
Glenn Defense in 2004. Schaus said it charged the Navy for pumping
100,000 gallons of sewage from a destroyer that spent four days in port
— an impossible amount, because the ship’s tanks held just 12,000
gallons and were serviced only once a day.
Schaus told The Post that he summoned Francis for an explanation. “He
became furious, accusing me of calling him a liar. And I told him, ‘I
am calling you a liar.’ He said, ‘Lieutenants don’t tell me what to do.
Do you know who I am?’ He was being profane and banging on the table.”
Afterward, Schaus said he was told by other Navy officials to back off,
something that he said invariably happened when he raised questions
about Glenn Defense.
The company “was rotten from the first day I worked with them in 2004,
and everyone knew they were rotten,” Schaus said. “Everyone knew what
was going on, and it was just accepted as the way it was. If you tried
to rock the boat, you got squashed.”
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, according to the second officer, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because he remains on active duty and wasn’t
authorized to speak to a reporter.
“He came into my office with a big grin wanting to be paid,” the
officer said. The officer protested and brought up the lavish party
from the night before. “I came right out and told Francis that we were
paying for it with this bill.”
The officer said he lost the argument, and Francis got what he wanted.
‘Endemic corruption’
Eighteen months later, the cycle repeated itself when another aircraft carrier visited Hong Kong.
Rear Adm. Michael H. Miller, commander of the USS Ronald Reagan carrier
strike group, knew Francis well. In early 2006, he emailed the
contractor to say he’d be coming to Asia soon, that he looked forward
to renewing their friendship and could use some shopping advice,
according to Navy documents obtained under FOIA.
The Reagan and three other ships in the strike group docked in Hong
Kong on June 10. The next day, at Miller’s request, Francis arranged a
splendid banquet for officers at the Island Shangri-La, this time at
Petrus, a swanky French restaurant with views of Victoria Harbor.
Miller and his officers were accustomed to eating well with Francis.
One week earlier, when the strike group had visited Malaysia, Francis
took them to the Chalet Suisse restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. Before that,
in Singapore, he arranged for dinner at Jaan, ranked as one of Asia’s
50 best restaurants.
To comply with ethics rules, Miller and two other senior officers wrote
personal checks to reimburse Francis. They estimated the fair market
value at between $50 and $70 per meal.
In fact, the dinners actually cost more than 10 times that much: about
$750 per person, according to the findings of a Navy disciplinary
investigation that was completed last year.
After the meals, Miller and other officers showered Francis with Bravo Zulu messages.
“Words cannot adequately express my appreciation for the service you
have provided in all our ports of call,” Miller wrote to Francis two
days after he left Hong Kong. “You are as much a member of the U.S.
Navy team as any of us, and we are all proud to call you ‘Shipmate.’ ”
The Navy investigation found Miller’s note amounted to an official
endorsement of Glenn Defense, a violation of ethics rules. He was
formally censured by the Navy last year and retired soon after. He
declined to comment.
Other officers colluded with Francis “to conceal the true nature” of
the Hong Kong officers’ banquet from the Navy’s Ship Support Office,
which was still tangling with Francis over his invoices, the
investigation found.
Schaus, the ship support officer, said he suspected at the time that
Glenn Defense was overcharging the Navy for the Reagan’s visit. He
alerted NCIS and asked for a criminal inquiry.
An NCIS agent assigned to the Reagan interviewed him, he said. But the
case went nowhere and only provoked a backlash. “Everybody on the ship
hated me,” Schaus said. Navy officials declined to comment.
He resigned his Navy commission a few months later. He said he left for
many reasons but that “the endemic corruption I observed during my
short tenure of working within the supply world was certainly a major
factor.”
On Francis’s payroll
Around the same time, Francis planted a couple of moles in the Navy’s regional contracting office in Singapore.
Starting in 2006, Sharon Gursharan Kaur, a Singapore national who
worked for the Navy, leaked confidential contract information to
Francis for about $100,000 in cash and luxury vacations in Bali and
Dubai, according to the Singapore Corrupt Practices Investigation
Bureau.
Kaur has been charged with corruption and money-laundering offenses in
Singapore. Her case is pending. Her attorney did not respond to emails
seeking comment.
Also in 2006, Francis began a relationship with Paul Simpkins, an
American civilian who worked in Singapore as a Navy contract supervisor.
Over the course of several surreptitious meetings in a Singapore hotel
bar, Francis offered Simpkins $50,000 to rig the bidding for Navy
contracts in Thailand and the Philippines, according to a federal
indictment of Simpkins.
Prosecutors allege Simpkins demanded more and ultimately received
$450,000 in cash and payments wired to foreign bank accounts controlled
by his wife.
In addition to allegedly rigging the Navy contracts for Francis,
Simpkins served as a secret fixer in other matters for Glenn Defense,
according to the indictment.
For example, when a Navy official in Singapore flagged questionable
bills from the company related to a port visit by the USS Decatur, a
guided-missile destroyer, Simpkins nipped the inquiry in the bud,
prosecutors said.
“Do not request any invoices from this ship,” Simpkins ordered his
colleague in an email, according to court records. “Do not violate this
instruction. Contact the ship and rescind your request.”
Prosecutors also allege that in 2007, Simpkins ordered the Navy’s Hong
Kong office to stop using flow meters to measure the amount of sewage
that Glenn Defense pumped from ships, making it easier for the firm to
gouge the Navy for the service.
Simpkins left the Singapore office that year to become a senior
contracting executive for the Justice Department and later for the
Defense Department. Prosecutors have accused him of maintaining a
relationship with Francis while he worked in Washington.
During a return trip to Singapore for vacation, Simpkins asked Francis to arrange for some prostitutes, court records show.
“Can u set up some clean, disease free wome[n]when I am there?”
Simpkins emailed. A few days later, he added: “Whats the plan to meet
up and maybe do some honeys?”
“Honeys and bunnys,” Francis replied, confirming the date.
Simpkins has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
‘A snake charmer’
Francis’s most audacious achievement was his penetration of 7th Fleet
headquarters in Japan. Four officers and an enlisted sailor who worked
there have pleaded guilty to taking bribes.
In each case, court records show, Francis or his executives carefully
groomed their targets, befriending them while searching for weak
points: money or marital problems, alcohol, loneliness, lust, low
self-esteem.
Lt. Cmdr. Todd Malaki, a logistics planner for the 7th Fleet, said he
was introduced by his commander to Francis in 2004 at one of the
contractor’s famous parties.
“He was charming, personable and incredibly influential,” Malaki
recalled in a confessional letter to a federal judge. “As we drank
together, he convinced me into believing that we were friends and he
was a mentor. I’m ashamed to admit that I wanted to believe we were
equals.”
Before long, Malaki was handing over classified ship schedules and
proprietary information about Glenn Defense’s competitors. In turn,
Francis gave him about $3,000 in cash, paid for him to stay in hotels
around Asia and provided him with a prostitute after a night at a
Malaysian karaoke club.
“There is no excuse for what I did, but I fell under the charm of Mr.
Francis,” Malaki wrote. “I suspect that he sensed the weakness of my
character. He was like a snake charmer, preying on my flaws and
manipulating me to serve or advance his interests.”
Malaki was sentenced in January to a 40-month prison term.
In 2010, Glenn Defense executives hooked Dan Layug, a petty officer who
worked in logistics for 7th Fleet, initially by bribing him with a free
cellphone, court records show.
Over the next three years, as Layug leaked competitors’ secrets and
classified ship schedules to the firm, it rewarded him with more
electronic gadgets, including video-game consoles, cameras and tablet
computers. The company also provided free hotel rooms in ports across
Asia to him and his friends.
Eventually, Layug worked his way up to an allowance of $1,000 a month.
According to prosecutors, he’d drive to the Glenn Defense offices in
Japan, roll down his window in the parking lot and exchange classified
material for a cash-filled envelope.
“I let my ego and my greed take over me and ended up betraying my
country,” Layug said at a January court hearing in San Diego. He was
sentenced to 27 months in prison.
Capt. Daniel Dusek, who served as deputy director of operations for the
7th Fleet, said in court papers that a mentor introduced Francis to him
in 2010 as “a great friend of the Navy.”
At the time, Dusek said he was feeling vulnerable because he was
overworked, prone to heavy drinking and depressed by “the tortuous
ending of my second marriage.”
Within months, Glenn Defense began supplying him with prostitutes,
alcohol and stays at luxury hotels. In turn, Dusek handed over
classified ship schedules and steered aircraft carriers to “fat revenue
ports” controlled by Glenn Defense. He became such a valuable agent
that Francis labeled him “a golden asset.”
In a court memo, Dusek confessed to his crimes but suggested that the
corruption was widespread. He blamed an “endemic culture within the
Navy in Asia” and charged that Francis “was able to leverage his way to
the top in plain view of generations of senior Naval Officers and
Admirals.”
The sex factor
Perhaps the most effective bribe Francis offered was sex.
He was choosy about his prostitutes and worked with trusted escort
agencies in several countries. He kept meticulous notes about the
physical desires of Navy officials, such as who liked Thai girls, or
group sex.
Sometimes, he would debrief the hookers afterward, looking for scraps
of information he could exploit, according to court records and an
individual familiar with his methods.
Once, he personally videotaped a Navy officer having sex with twin
Vietnamese prostitutes in a hotel room in Singapore, according to two
people familiar with the incident.
In another case, Francis went to unusual lengths to cater to Cmdr. Jose
L. Sanchez, a married logistics officer at 7th Fleet headquarters who
became one of his most valuable moles starting in 2009.
According to an affidavit filed by federal agents, Francis once asked
an Indonesian madam to send four prostitutes to Singapore to spend four
days with Sanchez and three other Navy officers.
Although that port visit was canceled at the last minute, on other
occasions Francis hired prostitutes to spend time with Sanchez and
friends in his “wolf pack” in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, a second
affidavit shows.
Another time, Francis messaged a prostitute with a last-minute request
to see Sanchez in the Philippines. “Hey Love Jose is in Manila at the
Diamond Hotel go and see him he needs some love asap.”
“Papi, I’m here,” the prostitute replied. “Jose’s fone is not
answering. I’m here having drinks at the lobby. Call him:( maybe his
sleeping?” Later, she emailed Francis with an update. “I’m with him
already heehehe.”
Sanchez has pleaded guilty to accepting as much as $120,000 in cash,
travel and sex with prostitutes. Prosecutors say he regularly leaked
classified ship and submarine schedules to Francis and tipped him off
whenever Glenn Defense came under suspicion for defrauding the Navy.
He is awaiting sentencing. His attorney, Vincent Ward, declined to comment.
In 2010, Glenn Defense executives began targeting Cmdr. Michael
Misiewicz, another married officer who was moving to 7th Fleet
headquarters.
Edmond Aruffo, a retired Navy officer who headed Glenn Defense’s
operations in Japan, took Misiewicz out to dinner. Then he paid for the
commander and his family to attend a production of “The Lion King” in
Tokyo.
“We gotta get him hooked on something,” Francis told Aruffo in an email entered into court records.
Within weeks, Aruffo discovered that Misiewicz had a fondness for
Japanese prostitutes, liked fancy hotels and needed to pay for
international travel for his extended family. The contractor obliged
repeatedly on all counts, and soon Misiewicz was funneling classified
material to the company.
“We got him!!:)” Aruffo emailed Francis.
“You bet the Godfather,” Fat Leonard replied.
“All hail!!!” cheered Aruffo, who has since pleaded guilty to bribery
and is awaiting sentencing. His attorneys did not respond to requests
for comment.
Misiewicz and Francis emailed, phoned and texted each other thousands
of times, according to prosecutors. In a court filing, they said the
officer became Francis’s “trained bulldog” in 7th Fleet headquarters
and fed him highly sensitive military secrets, including information
about ballistic missile defense operations in the Pacific.
In a letter to the judge in his case, Misiewicz blamed his behavior on
marital troubles and personal insecurities. He said Francis mentored
him and acted like a big brother.
“He made me feel special,” Misiewicz wrote. “I needed that given the personal isolation I was experiencing in my marriage.
Misiewicz was sentenced in April to 61/2 years in prison.
Francis the untouchable
In 2010, Glenn Defense’s fraudulent tactics finally began to draw
serious attention from the Navy. NCIS opened two separate criminal
investigations into the company for its billing practices in Thailand
and Japan.
But Francis had another ace in the hole: a turncoat law enforcement agent.
John Beliveau II, an NCIS agent based in Singapore and later at
Quantico, Va., had known Francis for at least two years. In exchange
for prostitutes, cash and other favors, he tapped into an NCIS database
as the cases unfolded and fed Francis raw material from investigators’
notes and interviews.
According to prosecutors, the information enabled Francis to cover his
tracks and intimidate witnesses. His NCIS spy proved so reliable and so
valuable that Francis became giddy.
“I have inside Intel from NCIS and read all the reports,” Francis
boasted in a 2011 email to another one of his moles. “I will show you a
copy of a Classified Command File on me from NCIS ha ha.”
Francis’s intelligence machine worked so well that Navy personnel in
Singapore suspected their offices had been bugged; some even thought
they were under surveillance by private detectives.
There were other reasons for Francis to feel untouchable.
Despite the ongoing NCIS investigations, in June 2011 the Navy awarded
Glenn Defense three major contracts, worth up to $200 million, to
service ships in Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Isles.
Top Navy brass seemed as pleased as ever with Francis. They extended
invitations for him to attend military change-of-command ceremonies
alongside Navy VIPs, diplomats, and relatives and close friends of the
commanders.
In September 2011, he boarded the USS Blue Ridge, the 7th Fleet
flagship, to watch Vice Adm. Scott Swift take charge from Vice Adm.
Scott Van Buskirk, according to documents obtained by The Post under
FOIA.
Six months later, he traveled to Hawaii for another ceremony in which
Adm. Locklear took command of all U.S. military forces in the Pacific
from Adm. Willard, the documents show. A seat was reserved for Francis
near the front.
Even when his luck turned bad, Francis always seemed to navigate back out of trouble.
In October 2012, Philippine authorities caught one of his ships, the
Glenn Guardian, illegally dumping about 200,000 liters of wastewater
near Subic Bay. The wastewater had been collected from the USS Emory S.
Land, a submarine tender, during a port visit.
An investigation by the Philippine Senate found that Glenn Defense had
been dumping millions of liters of wastewater from U.S. Navy ships for
years without proper permits.
Company executives argued that as a U.S. defense contractor the firm
was protected from liability under terms of a U.S.-Philippines defense
treaty. Despite a public outcry, the company was not penalized or fined
in the end.
The trap is sprung
In the end, Francis’s overconfidence led to his downfall.
Navy officials eventually realized that Francis had infiltrated NCIS.
Cybersecurity teams discovered that Beliveau had been downloading
hundreds of files about Francis from the law enforcement database, even
though the NCIS agent wasn’t assigned to the case.
In July 2013, they planted false information in the database, stating
that all investigations against Glenn Defense had been closed and no
charges would be filed.
Two months later, thinking he was in the clear, Francis flew to San
Diego to attend another change-of-command ceremony and to drum up
business from the Navy’s Global Logistics Support Command.
Instead, he fell into the Navy’s trap. After giving a PowerPoint
briefing to two admirals about ways that he said Glenn Defense could
save the Navy money, he returned to his hotel and was arrested.
Beliveau was arrested the same day in Washington. He has pleaded guilty to bribery charges and is awaiting sentencing.
Beliveau’s attorney, Jessica Carmichael of Alexandria, said he “fell
under Francis’s spell” and “will forever regret his conduct.”
“The range and number of high-level officials involved shows the
influential and manipulative nature of Leonard Francis,” she added. “He
was clearly a dynamic personality who could con so many senior
officials into his far-reaching scheme.”
Francis has been locked up in San Diego since his 2013 arrest. He is
awaiting sentencing and faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. When he
pleaded guilty last year, court papers show he promised to cooperate in
a bid for leniency.
Authorities have identified only a few of the 30 admirals under investigation.
The Navy announced in November 2013 that two admirals in charge of the
service’s secrets — Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch, the director of naval
intelligence, and a deputy, Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless — were under
criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
Since then, the two officers have been mired in limbo, neither charged
nor cleared. Navy and Justice officials have disclosed no other
details. Branch and Loveless declined to comment.
In a previously undisclosed case, NCIS agents are also investigating
Rear Adm. Robert Gilbeau, a supply and logistics officer, according to
a senior Navy official and two people who have been questioned.
Gilbeau came to know Francis during several deployments to Asia and is
also under scrutiny for his relationships with contractors when he
served in Afghanistan in 2012 and 2013, according to the people
questioned in the case.
Reached by phone, Gilbeau confirmed he was under investigation but declined to comment further.
The open-ended nature of the investigation, with so many officers under
scrutiny, has hampered the Navy’s ability to fill command jobs and move
forward with promotions.
It has also led to grumbling that many officers have been forced to
work under a cloud of suspicion for years, without facing charges,
unable to clear their names.
“I’m not the guy to sweep this under the rug. In my view, there was a
problem,” said Peter H. Daly, a retired vice admiral who serves as
chief executive of the U.S. Naval Institute, a nonprofit military
association in Annapolis. “But to let this thing drag out is wrong.
It’s just bad, bad, bad. It shouldn’t be this way. It’s not fair.”
Prosecutors have said it has taken so long to get to the bottom of the scandal because there is a mountain of evidence to mine.
Investigators said they have amassed 18 terabytes of data from more
than 100 email and Facebook accounts, as well as dozens of computer
hard drives, tablets and smartphones. Nine federal agents were assigned
just to organize and upload the materials.
The evidence remains under a protective order to prevent it from being
made public. But, occasionally, new details emerge that illustrate the
scope of Francis’s penetration of the Navy.
Last month, for instance, lawyers for Misiewicz, one of the officers
who has pleaded guilty, filed a court document stating that Francis had
gone so far as to bribe Navy public-affairs specialists “to advise and
train him on the Navy’s strategic talking points.”
The document gave no other details. But a person close to the
investigation said the public-affairs officers worked for the
Hawaii-based U.S. Pacific Fleet and that Francis bribed them with a
combination of cash, dinners and prostitutes.