A military contractor named “Fat Leonard” who pleaded guilty to the worst US Navy corruption scandal has been arrested in Venezuela after fleeing the United States, Interpol’s Caracas office said.

Leonard Francis turned off his GPS monitor and escaped house arrest in California in early September.

“The fugitive was arrested at Simon Bolivar de Maiquetia International Airport as he was about to leave the country,” read a post shared on Instagram by Interpol’s Caracas office on Wednesday.

Leonard “entered the country from Mexico with a stopover in Cuba” and intended to travel to Russia, the Post said, adding that he was the subject of an Interpol red notice.

Francis, a Malaysian national who ran a military company from Singapore, pleaded guilty in 2015 to offering US$500,000 in bribes to naval officers to direct official work to his shipyards and to carry out work on US ships for the he overcharged, amounting to $35 million, according to Navy prosecutors.

Police were dispatched to his San Diego residence on Sept. 4 after the agency monitoring his ankle bracelet reported a problem with the device and found he was gone, the US Marshals Service said.

Francis was arrested in 2013 and pleaded guilty two years later. He suffered from numerous health problems, including kidney cancer, which led to his being released to house arrest in 2018 while serving as a cooperating witness for federal prosecutors.

He was due to be sentenced on September 22nd.

So far, four naval officers have been found guilty in the case, while another 29 people, including naval officials, contractors and Francis himself, have pleaded guilty, US media said.