D’Souza had been lobbying for community service, though federal prosecutors didn’t take kindly to his claims of persecution. “Based on the defendant’s own post-plea statements, the court should reject the defendant’s claims of contrition on the eve of sentencing,” prosecutors wrote in a public filing where they argued D’Souza should serve 10-16 months in prison. The maximum sentence he faced was two years.

D’Souza’s attorneys at Brafman & Associates in New York also argued in court documents that their client was “singled out for more vigorous prosecution.” Cases the government prosecutors cite in order to convince the judge that D’Souza deserved time in prison were “disingenuous” because in each case there were “aggravating factors,” such as wire fraud or political favors, the attorneys said. “The distinctions, we submit, are so significant that to cite those cases in support of a sentence parity argument requires a tortured logic,” the attorneys wrote.