BRIDGEPORT, CONN.: A Jordanian national has been sentenced to 42 months in prison for his role in a commercial bribery scheme and for violating federal tax and immigration laws. Fares Khraisat, 39, of Easton, was sentenced in federal court in Bridgeport. Judge Stefan R. Underhill also ordered him to pay a $30,000 fine and forfeit more than $3 million in cash, real estate and other items.

Prosecutors say Khraisat owned a Bridgeport phone card company called Zam-Zam Telecard and paid more than $400,000 in bribes to receive favorable treatment from a company owned by co-defendant Jonathan Kaplan. Khraisat pleaded guilty in February to mail fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, making a false statement on an immigration application and making a false statement on a tax return.

He has also admitted to providing, along with others, between $400,000 and $500,000 in illegally received cash to several other co-defendants, who transferred the funds via Hong Kong to a bank account in Jordan.

His wife, Jumana Qutishat, 30, was also sentenced to time served and a $5,000 fine for her participation in a sham marriage to another man in order to obtain US citizenship. Prosecutors say she sought to help Khraisat, her true husband, obtain citizenship based on her own, fraudulently obtained citizenship. She has been confined to her home since her arrest about 17 months ago. Both are subject to deportation to Jordan after their sentences are complete. ``We were disappointed,'' said Ira Grudberg, Khraisat's attorney.

``I thought it was perhaps less necessary for deterrence or anything else to have him serve a long sentence.'' Kaplan pleaded guilty in November 2007 to wire fraud and tax evasion and awaits sentencing. In March, a New York man who admitted helping Khraisat launder money was sentenced to 16 months in prison for his role in the scheme. Amer Ramzi Chahal of Forest Hills, N.Y., was caught by investigators in October 2006 leaving Khraisat's store with a box containing $50,000 cash that prosecutors said he planned to deposit in the Jordan bank.