Court: Ex-WPAFB airman ‘lied’ again
Sentencing delayed for suspect who sold night goggles.
The former Wright-Patterson Air Force Base senior airman guilty of selling night vision goggles on eBay had his sentencing delayed again this week.
In a sentencing memorandum in New York’s Eastern Division District Court, prosecutors wrote said Zachary Sizemore repeated “the same lie” in court documents that he did to WPAFB law enforcement.
Sizemore admitted to stealing night vision goggles and other equipment and selling it for $154,000 to people in New York and elsewhere from July 2013 until November 2016 when he was arrested in his Huber Heights home, according to the criminal complaint.
Prosecutors have recommended a 12- to 18-month prison term. Sentencing is currently scheduled for March 6, at least the fifth different sentencing date.
Prosecutors wrote that in Sizemore’s submission to the court, that he “fully accepts responsibility for his crime” but that he repeated an untrue statement.
“After his arrest, Sizemore claimed to believe the night vision equipment he stole from the military and resold online had been discarded and that he found it in a dumpster,” prosecutors wrote. “That claim is without any basis and is belied by the facts.”
Prosecutors — who wrote that Sizemore still owes the government $96,032.76 — indicated many items were still in their original cases with accessories and manuals and that protocol prohibited any equipment to be discarded such as placed in a dumpster.
Sizemore’s sentencing memo points out that he is a “remorseful and respectful 25-year-old who took what he thought was excessed equipment from his Air Force base job and sold it on (eBay),” his federal public defender wrote. “His actions ended his military career, sunk him and his wife into financial ruin, and subjected him to a military court martial.”
The defense memo said Sizemore was between tours of duty overseas, had recently gotten married, that he felt betrayed and hurt by his family and that left him with a “deep reservoir of financial insecurity.”
The memo also said: “The pull of material things was strong, and as everyone knows, greed is never a satisfied customer.”
Attached along with the memo were character statements, including letters of support from WPAFB Staff Sgt. Isaac Galvan, Dayton police Maj. Brian Johns, Sizemore’s wife and her parents.
“To say that all of us were disappointed with the decision Zach made to break the law is an understatement. We were in total shock,” Johns wrote, saying it was the first time in his career he wrote a letter supporting a criminal defendant. “All of us, including Zach’s wife, were in shock because that isn’t who Zach is. He is better than that.”
Galvan wrote that he was deployed to Afghanistan and Kuwait with Sizemore, who won an Air Force Achievement Medal and whom Galvan wrote became a Security Forces Armorer. Galvan said that Sizemore has maintained his integrity and that “people who possess the same character and work ethic as Sizemore are very hard to find in any field.”
An earlier sentencing memo written by assistant U.S. attorney Nomi Berenson said a person who purchased a night vision goggle (NVG) and a mini-thermal monocular (MTM) is a foreign national and that “had law enforcement authorities not intercepted the packages, they would have been exported from the United States.”
That memo also states the technology is on the International Traffic in Arms “Munitions List” and requires a license to be exported to a foreign country. Sizemore remains out on bond as he awaits sentencing.