A Mississippi man was sentenced to prison this week for faking his own death in an effort to avoid criminal charges after impregnating a teenage girl in Alabama, ABC News reports.
Jacob Blair Scott was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison, when U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock ruled that Scott’s new sentence will run concurrently as his 85-year prison sentence, which he received earlier this year for his conviction in Mississippi on sexual battery charges.
Back in July 2018, Scott, who was slated to appear in court on the aforementioned charges related to having raped and impregnated a 14-year-old girl, took a boat into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Orange Beach, Alabama. Scott also withdrew $45,000 from his bank account before he disappeared.
Authorities later found his abandoned boat with a pistol and suicide note attached, which urged family members not to change their phone numbers for a year.
Scott pleaded guilty in August to federal charges of sending a false distress call that led to a Coast Guard search, illegally shipping weapons across state lines and giving false information. Convicted charges in that case ultimately included multiple counts of sexual battery and touching a child for lustful purposes, as well as a single count of child exploitation
In addition to the 21 month-sentence, Beaverstock has ordered Scott to pay $17,165 to compensate the Coast Guard for the search. Scott is also obligated to participate in a sex offender treatment program.
