Former Owner of IMSA Receives 15 Years

Once one of the state's biggest road contractors and owner of IMSA, Michael Cone will spend the next 20 years behind bars, undone, a judge said, by his greed and sheer inability to tell the truth. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew sentenced Cone, 52, to 15 years in federal prison for bankruptcy fraud and ordered that his sentence run consecutively to a five-year state sentence he is serving for participating in an organized scheme to defraud the state Department of Transportation.

Ten years ago, Cone Constructors, with headquarters on Tampa's South Lois Avenue and an office in Miami, had some 300 employees in Hillsborough County and did $60 million in business. The company had done about $323 million in road contracting with Florida over the previous 10 years and was probably one of the 10 largest contractors with DOT, state officials said at the time. The company worked on major projects, including the Veterans Expressway, Polk Parkway and Suncoast Parkway.

"This is a fall from grace unlike any other case I've been involved with," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Porcelli, who successfully argued for the harshest possible sentence, calling Cone's actions an assault on the bankruptcy system.