
U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle on Wednesday sentenced confessed embezzler Mark Titus to five years in prison after first ruling that Titus could not withdraw the guilty plea he entered last year. Titus had pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit mail fraud as part of a deal with the government in which he admitted scheming to loot $1.2 million from Garner Services, a construction firm he co-owns.
But Titus sought to retract his plea after federal prosecutors moved to seize his assets to recoup the missing money, something he said the government had originally promised not to do.