B.C. man faces 20 years in jail after conviction in major scam involving USG planes, boats

B.C. resident Bradley Garner, 51, was convicted of wire fraud and other charges  in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on Tuesday and faces a jail term of up to 20-years for his role in a massive scam to steal U.S. government surplus property including planes and boats.

Garner, who maintains a home in the Sunshine Coast, also lived part of the time in Palm Desert, California.

As part of a joint investigation, Canadian authorities had earlier seized two boats that had been transferred from the USA and tied up near Sechelt.

Garner was convicted of public corruption charges involving a scheme to misappropriate expensive federal property such as boats, planes, vehicles and computers. The jury deliberated about ten hours, following a three week jury trial.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ordered Garner detained pending sentencing scheduled for September 28, 2009.

Garner’s co-conspirator, his half-brother Steven B. Smith, a former employee of the Federal Aviation Administration is scheduled for trial on October 6, 2009.

According to records filed in the case and testimony at trial, Steven Smith misused a government computer to place holds on items meant for transfer to other federal agencies.

Smith would place a claim on the property as a representative of the FAA.

However, Smith was not authorized to place any holds for the FAA. Garner then traveled the country picking up claimed goods worth thousands of dollars. Some of the items claimed include two 27′ Boston Whaler boats, a Cessna airplane, a 50 foot yacht used in the Bahamas by the Drug Enforcement Administration, and a sailing yawl that had been used by the Naval ROTC program at the University of Washington.

Although the scheme was international in scope, the counts of conviction relate to specific things Garner did in Western Washington as he claimed the various items. For example, the Mail Fraud conviction relates to an insurance claim Garner filed on the Cessna airplane falsely indicating he had purchased the plane for one dollar.

Prosecutors pointed out that Garner, who ran a limousine service, never obtained title showing the items were legally purchased and never registered the cars, boats or plane with licensing authorities.

Garner stored the items at his home or airport hangar. Some of the items, such as the sailboat claimed from the Navy ROTC, were smuggled to Canada.

Garner faces up to twenty years in prison for Mail Fraud and Wire Fraud. Garner and Smith were first arrested in Southern California in November 2008.

They were indicted by the grand jury in February 2009.

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