DENVER -- A federal judge has ordered six-year prison terms for a man who advertised as a 'collection agency' in Soldier of Fortune magazine and a motorcycle gang founder who hired him to extort $260,000 from a doctor.
Bruce Gale Richardson, 44, of Fort Lupton, Colo., and Robert Leslie Konitski, 35, of Rockford, Ill., were sentenced for their guilty pleas to charges they engineered the May abduction of Dr. Michael Roark from a Buffalo, N.Y., hotel.
U.S. District Judge Sherman Finesilver imposed sentence during a hearing Tuesday.
Richardson, a founder of the Sons of Silence motorcycle gang, admitted hiring Konitski to collect money from Roark after he saw Konitski's advertisement in Soldier of Fortune. Konitski, who carried an Uzi submachine gun during the abduction, pleaded guilty to arranging the kidnapping.
Richardson's wife, Broomfield, Colo., physician Patricia Stranahan, had claimed Roark owed her $260,000 as a result of failed business ventures. The two had tangled earlier in Colorado's courts. Mrs. Stranahan is to stand trial Sept. 17 for her part in the abduction.
Finesilver earlier Tuesday sentenced one of the three people who helped in abducting Roark, Michael Rattley, 22, to serve up to six years in prison. The two others, Robert Jordan, 21, and Ariel Falcon, 22, await sentencing.
