NEW ORLEANS—A businessman was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months
in prison for a plot in which he fraudulently billed BP for
roughly $1.4 million for use of a helicopter after the company's
massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  Bay Ingram, who
owned Southeast Recovery Group, had faced a maximum of five
years in prison following his guilty plea last year to a
conspiracy charge. U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance imposed his
prison sentence and also ordered the Covington man to pay a
total of $463,271 in restitution to BP and Rotorcraft Leasing
Company, which provided Ingram with the helicopter and its crew.
Ingram, 50, billed BP for a helicopter that the St. Bernard
Parish Sheriff's Office and Louisiana Department of Wildlife and
Fisheries were supposed to use after the spill. Prosecutors say
he falsified and forged documents to justify inflated invoices
he submitted to the London-based oil giant in the aftermath of
the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, which killed 11 workers and
triggered the nation's wo