LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man accused of drowning two of his sons & trying to kill his ex-wife by driving them off a Los Angeles wharf to collect an insurance payout was sentenced Thursday to 212 years in federal prison for fraud.
Ali F. Elmezayen, 45, received the maximum sentence from a judge who denounced an “evil & diabolical scheme.”
“He is the ultimate phony & a skillful liar … and is nothing more than a greedy and brutal killer,” U.S. District Judge John R. Walter said. “The only regret that the defendant has is that he got caught.”
The judge also ordered Elmezayen to pay $261,751 in restitution to the insurance companies. A federal jury convicted him of mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft & money laundering in 2019.
After the car plunged into the water in 2015, Elmezayen was charged in the federal fraud case & accused by local prosecutors of murder, attempted murder & a special circumstance that the killings were for financial gain.
The murder charges were arranged to be prosecuted after the federal case.
“A bench warrant has been issued & our office is evaluating the next step,” Greg Risling, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney, said.
Elmezayen bought more than $3 million worth of life & accidental death policies on himself & his family from eight insurance companies between July 2012 & March 2013.
Elmezayen drove a car carrying his ex-wife and two youngest children off a commercial fishermen’s wharf in the San Pedro area of the Port of Los Angeles on April 9, 2015. It was 12 days after the two-year contestability period on the last of his insurance policies expired, prosecutors said.
Elmezayen got out through the open driver’s side window and his ex-wife, who could not swim, was rescued when she got out and a fisherman threw her a flotation device. The boys, ages 8 & 13, were strapped in & could not escape the vehicle.
Their third son was away at camp at the time.
Elmezayen received more than $260,000 in insurance proceeds from two companies on policies he had taken out on the children’s lives & used some of the money to buy real estate in Egypt & a boat, prosecutors said.
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