<p>LOS ANGELES — A man accused of drowning two of his sons and 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.</p>
<p>Ali F. Elmezayen, 45, received the maximum sentence from a judge who denounced an “evil and diabolical scheme.” </p>
<p>“He is the ultimate phony and 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.”</p>
<p>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 and money laundering in 2019.</p>
<p>After the car plunged into the water in 2015, Elmezayen was charged in the federal fraud case and accused by local prosecutors of murder, attempted murder and a special circumstance that the killings were for financial gain. </p>
<p>The murder charges were arranged to be prosecuted after the federal case. </p>
<p>“A bench warrant has been issued and our office is evaluating the next step,” Greg Risling, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney, said in an email to The Associated Press.</p>
<p>Elmezayen, of suburban Hawthorne, bought more than $3 million worth of life and accidental death policies on himself and his family from eight insurance companies between July 2012 and March 2013, according to federal prosecutors.</p>
<p>He paid more than $6,000 a year in premiums for the policies while reporting income of less than $30,000 a year on his tax returns, prosecutors said, noting that he began buying the policies the same year he exited a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.</p>
<p>Prosecutors said Elmezayen repeatedly called the companies to verify the policies were active and that they would pay benefits if his ex-wife died in an accident as well as confirm with at least two insurers that they would not investigate claims made two years after the purchases.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 and 13, were strapped in and could not escape the vehicle.</p>
<p>Their third son was away at camp at the time.</p>
<p>Elmezayen received more than $260,000 in insurance proceeds from two companies on policies he had taken out on the children’s lives and used some of the money to buy real estate in Egypt and a boat, prosecutors said.</p>
