JACKSONVILLE – A Jacksonville judge has sentenced a disgraced former certified public accountant to serve 20 years in a Florida prison in connection with stealing some $16.6 million from former accounting clients.

Judge Mark Hulsey sentenced James Kevin Hargnett, 53, of Green Cove Springs on Feb. 10 to serve five, 20-year sentences concurrently after his defense attorney had requested 10-14 year sentences. Defense attorney Allan F. Brooke II of Jacksonville stated he made his sentencing request based on “the facts of the case and the cooperation of the defendant since September 2013,” according to a 101-page sentencing memorandum.

Hargnett pled guilty to three counts of grand theft valued $100,000 or more, one count of schemes to defraud greater than $50,000 and one count of racketeering on June 1, 2015. Police originally charged Hargnett with 254 counts of grand theft along with the two lesser charges. During the investigation, police found that Hargnett “conducted more than 254 separate withdrawal transactions, on separate dates from more than a dozen accounts of individuals and entities for which he was supposed to be providing accounting services” and funneling the funds into a shell company called SA III Partners, a company he owned and created to facilitate the thefts.

Under the judge’s ruling, Hargnett’s sentence will be reduced by 796 days, which was the time he has been held in the Duval County Pre-Trial Detention Center. He will remain in the county jail until transfer to a state prison.

In the months leading to his sentencing hearing, Hargnett’s attorneys worked to collect 49 letters from his friends, family, pastors and other community leaders asking for lenience in the sentencing process. One of the letters cites how Hargnett first disclosed his thefts to his employer – Demetree Brothers Inc. – on August 29, 2013, months before his December 6, 2013 arrest.

“He was remorseful and truthful, though he was not certain of the true magnitude of his wrongdoing,” states the sentencing memo. “He pledged to work with his victims to determine the precise amount that he had stolen and to pay back as much as possible from the liquidation of his assets.”

Court records show that Hargnett has paid back $5.91 million in restitution as a result of selling off various assets he accumulated since 2006, the year the theft began. For example, one asset was an estate off County Road 209 in Clay County that included two houses on 19 acres that sold for $1.575 million. A second home in the Country Club of Orange Park, sold for $385,000.

According to court records, Hargnett began paying back some of the stolen money even before his arrest.

“Before December 6, 2013, he made restitution payments totaling approximately $2,325,000 to the victims, and transferred ownership interests in business ventures in the approximate amount of $225,000, states the sentencing memo.

“For the 100 days before he was arrested, Mr. Hargnett cooperated with the victims (directly or through counsel) to ascertain and mitigate the damage he had caused. He was candid and truthful with his employers over this extended period of time. He demonstrated sincere remorse.”

In a three-page letter to the court, Hargnett asked for “undeserved leniency,” while recounting a life of helping others and spending other people’s money to make donations to various ministries, churches, private schools and nonprofit organizations.

“I cared for people and helped when asked,” he writes. “But even these acts were self-serving and vain. As people or organizations looked to me for help, I felt needed, important, worthwhile. Inside, I knew it was a sham, but I couldn’t stop.”

Hargnett described his crimes much like an addiction saying he couldn’t “break away from it,” despite trying several times. His letter also explains the raw truth of how he betrayed people who treated him like family.

“I have hurt my victims more than I ever imagined, causing a dear old man, my friend who I cared for deeply, such pain and anguish in his last few years that I cannot forgive myself,” states Hargnett’s letter. “He trusted me as a member of his family, and I could barely look him in the eye the last time I saw him. I could not attend his funeral, nor even send a card with my sympathy and respect to his family lest it appear shallow and self-serving.”

Hargnett also explains the betrayal and harm his theft caused his immediate family. His now ex-wife Kimberli remarried and moved from Florida with their 10-year-old daughter. “It’s as if her daddy has dropped out of her life, abandoned her,” Hargnett writes.

However, Hargnett’s letter is not all contrition. In an almost bragging manner, Hargnett explains that had he not re-traced his financial chicanery for the authorities, it would have taken years and multiple experts to unravel.

“I meticulously re-created records and identified all of the illegal transfers and the account sources,” Hargnett writes. “It might have taken a forensic accountant or the State Attorney’s Office years to piece all that together, but I had to try to begin to atone for what I had done.”

Neither attorneys for the state or the defense agreed to comment for this story. Under Florida law, Hargnett must serve 85 percent of the 20-year sentence.