A man of Kenyan origin has been handed a 10-year jail sentence and a fine of Sh25 million by a Texas-based court for stealing from the US government.
J. S. Ndungi, 32, was convicted in September last year and sentenced in January this year.
According to the Standard, Ndungi was handed the sentence by Justice Jane Boyle after a three-day trial found him guilty of two counts of theft of public funds and one count of aggravated identity theft.
He was arrested in September 2016 at the Los Angeles Airport in California frantically trying to flee the US after stealing Sh7.7 million from the US Treasury.
He was in the US on a tourist visa. He was denied bail on grounds he was a flight risk.
During his trial, he was accused of illegally obtaining Sh7.7 million through cheques issued on federal income tax returns filed electronically from Kenya to the US Treasury.
On August 9, 2016, revealed undercover agents, Ndungi, “presented the treasury cheque to an undercover agent of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in exchange for Sh4.8 million.”
His second count was based on the guilty findings by the court where he stole another treasury refund cheque on an electronically filed return filed in 2012.
Ndungi will do his time at Dallas Prison.
Back in Kenya, he is the registered owner of two Cessna planes- one, a two-passenger, the other a four-passenger, that are parked at the Wilson Airport in Nairobi.
