FAT LEONARD

A vigorous investigation into the life of a con artist and swindler who had half the leadership of the U.S. Navy in his pocket.

Leonard Glenn Francis (b. 1964) was a high school dropout with few visible prospects. However, according to one of his former nemeses, he was “smarter than anyone he ever met.” Francis, a former street hustler in Malaysia, made no effort to conceal himself: He was heavy and uncommonly tall, and he threw himself around on the principle that “with a little luck and the right connections, you could pretty much get away with anything.” Washington Post reporter Whitlock, author of The Afghanistan Papers, capably chronicles how Francis did just that. Starting a seat-of-the-pants naval resupply business, which “faced scant competition in what was then a niche market,” Francis serviced ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Pacific. Soon, as what the Navy calls a “husbanding contractor,” he was gouging prices and cooking the books, such as when he billed one visiting missile destroyer $2.8 million for fuel and port services: “More than half the amount was fraudulent, based on fake invoices from fictitious subcontractors.” To enable his bilking, he bribed Navy officers and officials with prostitutes, booze, and baubles, playing on weaknesses—drinking problems, failing marriages—as deftly as the KGB. He also had spies everywhere, including inside the Navy’s vaunted NCIS. It all came crashing down when a few honest sailors began to doubt “Fat Leonard,” who grew grotesquely obese as the dollars accumulated. By 2018, 90 Navy admirals came under investigation for illicit dealings with Francis. The close of Whitlock’s account is the cat-and-mouse game of Francis’ trials before U.S. judges, an unlikely escape to Venezuela, and now, in 2024, extradition and resumed judicial inquiry.

Maddening and astonishing in its revelations of a crime spree that cost taxpayers untold millions.