Michigan State arsonist sentenced to 9 years

Oct. 20, 2008, By JAMES PRICHARD The Associated Press

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP) — A former environmental activist who committed arson at Michigan State University but later became an undercover FBI informant was sentenced Monday to nine years in federal prison.

Frank Ambrose, 33, told a federal judge he was sorry for what he did and accepted full responsibility. He was freed until he is ordered to report to prison authorities, which could take months.

Chief Judge Paul L. Maloney of U.S. District Court also sentenced Ambrose to a lifetime of supervisory release after prison and ordered him to pay $3.7 million in restitution to the university and to other sabotaged entities.

Ambrose apologized to officials at the school "and all the other people who I hurt by my actions."

He also said he was sorry to his relatives, about a dozen of whom attended the sentencing hearing. Some wept as Maloney issued the sentence.

"I want to apologize to my family," Ambrose said. "They raised me well. I should have resisted the people who helped lead me astray."

"I wish I could take all I did back. I've changed significantly from all those years where I did the bad things," he added.

An explosion and fire caused more than $1 million in damage at Michigan State's Agriculture Hall nearly nine years ago. It was a protest against genetically modified crops taken by Ambrose, who at the time belonged to the Earth Liberation Front, a radical band of environmentalists.

Ambrose pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit arson at Michigan State on Dec. 31, 1999, and to logging equipment the next day in Wexford County. While the charge is conspiracy, Ambrose admitted that he set the fires..

In his plea agreement, he also took responsibility for 11 other acts from 1999 to 2003, including tree spikings in Indiana and the arson of four homes under construction in Macomb and Washtenaw counties.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagen Frank said Ambrose's undercover work with the government went well beyond what most defendants do when seeking leniency in sentencing. Ambrose originally faced a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, but Frank asked Maloney for a term in the range of 100 to 125 months.

"I think it's an appropriate sentence," Frank said of the 108-month term Maloney handed down.

The judge said while he was impressed by the amount of help Ambrose provided to investigators and that he seemed genuinely remorseful, "only a prison sentence is appropriate in this case."

Members of Ambrose's family cried and consoled each other in the courtroom after the hearing. They declined to comment about the sentence, as did Ambrose himself and defense lawyer Michael Brady.

During the court session, Brady tried to get Maloney not to sentence his client to prison because of his undercover work and his repentance.

"I think there is no utility in incarceration, in terms of rehabilitating the defendant," the attorney said.

Ambrose became an informant in 2007, a few months after making a critical mistake: He dumped personal records, writings, a gas mask, an M-80 explosive and other possessions in a Detroit-area trash bin.

A man foraging for scrap cardboard called police, and the FBI subsequently raided Ambrose's home.

He turned on a co-defendant, his ex-wife, Marie Mason, but his cooperation with the government goes beyond Michigan.

Ambrose traveled outside the state seven times to gather intelligence and record conversations, Frank wrote in a court document. His assistance "enabled the FBI to significantly enhance its intelligence base concerning not only extremist activity in the upper Midwest but also concerning the methodology, the security culture and the psychology of ELF and related movements."

Mason, 46, of Cincinnati, pleaded guilty in September to three charges of conspiracy and arson, and is to be sentenced in February.