Bel-Air Man Gets Nearly 6 Years For Concealing Assets And Threatening Process Server

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A Bel-Air man who declared bankruptcy, then hid his assets and threatened a process server with a golf club, was sentenced Tuesday to nearly six years behind bars.

Milton Lee Vandevort, 50, was convicted in July 2010 of money laundering, concealing assets in a bankruptcy case, and making a false oath and a false declaration in a bankruptcy case.

He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Phillip S. Gutierrez to five years and 10 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $12,500 in fines, Assistant U.S. Attorney Pio S. Kim said.

Vandevort, who filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in 2005, hid his interests in a home in Bel-Air, a nursing registry business and various partnerships he created for income generated from the registry, according to the government.

Vandevort also assaulted a process server by threatening him with a golf club as he tried to serve subpoenas on the defendant's wife, Kim said.

Afterward, Vandevort called 911, falsely claiming that his family was experiencing a home invasion robbery, according to the prosecutor.

Vandevort was convicted of money laundering for using income generated from the nursing registry to pay his own expenses and using the proceeds of a 2004 refinance of the Bel-Air house to buy undeveloped land in Wyoming in the name of his mother-in-law, Kim said.

After returning its guilty verdicts, the jury found that the properties that Vandevort had concealed should be forfeited to the government.