By By Evan Burgos, NBC News
A former U.S. congressman from Arizona was sentenced to three years in prison Monday for convictions of public corruption.
Rick Renzi, once a three-term Republican in the House, was fined $25,000 in addition to the prison sentence.
In June, Renzi, 55, who represented Arizona's 1st Congressional District from 2003 to 2009, was found guilty on 17 felony counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy, extortion, racketeering, money laundering and making false statements to insurance regulators. He was acquitted on 15 other charges.
U.S. District Judge David C. Bury levied the sentence Monday in a federal courtroom in Tucson.
The charges stemmed from various illegal dealings involving real estate deals, financial kickbacks and fraud. Included in the lawsuit is a transaction from 2005, when Renzi stipulated that any proposal for a federal land exchange – a real estate deal in which a property owner exchanges privately owned land for federal land of equal value – would have to include land owned by business partner James Sandlin, according to the indictment.
Renzi is quoted in court documents as telling private investors, “No Sandlin Property, no bill.”
An investment firm agreed to a deal involving Sandlin, paying him $4.6 million. For forcing Sandlin’s inclusion, Renzi received a kickback of $733,000, according to the indictment.
Additionally, the indictment said that Renzi embezzled $460,000 from a family-owned Arizona insurance firm to his congressional campaign fund in 2002.
Renzi was indicted in 2008 and did not seek re-election when his term was up the following year. He faced a maximum of 100 years in prison, according to wire reports.
The U.S. Probation Office recommended that Renzi be sentenced to 33 months in federal prison, be fined $20,000 and serve three years of supervised release.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.
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