TWO SENTENCED ON WITNESS TAMPERING AND BANK FRAUD CHARGES

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Two defendants have been sentenced by a federal judge in Anchorage, Alaska, for bank fraud conspiracy and witness tampering in an alleged murder-for-hire plot, the Justice Department announced today.

At a hearing at U.S. District Court in Anchorage yesterday, Judge Owen M. Panner sentenced Arnold Wesley Flowers to 100 months in prison, and Sompong Khamsomphou to 63 months in prison, finding that both knew of a plan to kill a federal judge and a federal prosecutor in a bank fraud case.

Flowers and Khamsonphou had been convicted in June 2003 of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and convicted in separate proceedings of conspiracy to tamper with a witness in the bank fraud case and attempted witness tampering.

In imposing the sentence, the judge made a specific finding that based on a preponderance of the evidence, both defendants were aware of and participated in the plan to kill the witness, the federal judge and the prosecutor in the bank fraud case pending against them.

The witness tampering case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with the assistance of the Anchorage Police Department. It was prosecuted by the Domestic Security Section of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska was recused because one of its staff was also a target of the alleged conspiracy.

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