COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A former deputy treasurer in the state of Ohio who fled to Pakistan in the face of a 15-year prison sentence for a kickback scheme delivered a public apology before a federal judge on Friday and was sent to begin his time in U.S. prison.
Shackled and in prison khakis, Amer Ahmad appeared before a judge two days after he was extradited from Pakistan.
The judge had already announced Ahmad's sentence in December, a year after his guilty plea and at a time when it appeared unlikely he'd be returned. The last such extradition took almost 11 years.
Ahmad asked to serve his 15 years at the federal prison in Michigan to be close to his children, who live in Chicago, along with his ex-wife. He also owes $3.2 million in restitution to the government, a debt he shares with his three co-conspirators in the kickback scheme at the state treasurer's office.
Ahmad, who appeared thin, told the judge he had worked "aggressively" to be returned to the United States during 16 months in what he described as "a Third World jail" in Pakistan.
Ahmad pleaded guilty in December 2013 in federal court to bribery and conspiracy charges, but he fled to avoid punishment. He was arrested in Pakistan in April 2014 holding a forged Mexican passport, a fraudulent Pakistani birth certificate, a false Pakistani visa and $175,000.
Prosecutors say that between 2009 and January 2011, Ahmad, his friend Mohammed Noure Alo, Canton-based financial adviser Douglas E. Hampton and Chicago mortgage broker Joseph Chiavaroli conspired to use Ahmad's position at the state treasurer's office to enrich themselves and their businesses by securing lucrative state business.
Ahmad and Chiavaroli hid such payments using the accounts of a landscaping business in which the two had ownership interests, prosecutors say.
AP
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