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Disbarred lawyer faces sentencing in kidnap once called hoax

FILE - In this March 25, 2015 file photo, a news crew reports in front of the home of Denise Huskins, who was abducted in Vallejo, Calif. Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard University-trained attorney, faces decades in prison when he is sentenced Thursday, March 16, 2017, for kidnapping Huskins in a scheme so elaborate and bizarre that police in California initially dismissed it as a hoax. (Chris Riley/Vallejo Times-Herald via AP, file)
FILE - In this March 25, 2015 file photo, a news crew reports in front of the home of Denise Huskins, who was abducted in Vallejo, Calif. Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard University-trained attorney, faces decades in prison when he is sentenced Thursday, March 16, 2017, for kidnapping Huskins in a scheme so elaborate and bizarre that police in California initially dismissed it as a hoax. (Chris Riley/Vallejo Times-Herald via AP, file) FILE - In this March 25, 2015 file photo, a news crew reports in front of the home of Denise Huskins, who was abducted in Vallejo, Calif. Matthew Muller, a disbarred Harvard University-trained attorney, faces decades in prison when he is sentenced Thursday, March 16, 2017, for kidnapping Huskins in a scheme so elaborate and bizarre that police in California initially dismissed it as a hoax. (Chris Riley/Vallejo Times-Herald via AP, file)

By Associated Press 3 min read

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – A disbarred Harvard University-trained attorney faces decades in prison during his sentencing Thursday for a kidnapping so elaborate and bizarre that police in California initially dismissed it as a hoax.

Federal prosecutors are seeking a 40-year sentence for Matthew Muller, who pleaded guilty in September to holding a San Francisco Bay Area woman for ransom.

They realized that Denise Huskins was telling the truth about her March 2015 abduction only after Muller was implicated in a different crime.

Muller, 39, could be sentenced to life in prison by U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley, but prosecutors agreed to recommend 40 years in exchange for his guilty plea.

“Public safety requires that he be imprisoned until he is old and weak,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Dean Segal, calling the crime “depraved and egregious.”