A former Richmond man who admitted to posing as his dead childhood friend to siphon more than $80,000 from his bank account was sentenced Wednesday to a year and a day in federal prison.

Howard Hoffman, 53, will be on supervised release for five years after he is freed from prison.

He pleaded guilty in April to bank fraud. He was facing up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Nancy Torresen sentenced Hoffman in Portland.

Hoffman caused two checks, one for more than $61,000 and one for more than $19,000, to be drawn on the bank account of his childhood friend, referred to in court documents as R.M., who had died in March 2007 in Costa Rica.

In April 2008, Hoffman hatched a scheme to take control of his late friend’s money by first using R.M.’s personal identifying information to activate online banking features for R.M.’s bank account, prosecutors wrote in court records.

Next, Hoffman changed the address of his late friend’s bank account to Hoffman’s then-Richmond address.

Hoffman drew a check on R.M.’s bank account to be made payable to Malamute Investment Management, a corporation created in 2002 of which Hoffman was president. Hoffman created a new bank account with a credit union in Malamute’s name and had the check deposited in that account, prosecutors said in court records.

The second check, drawn 17 days later, also was deposited in the new credit union account under Malamute’s name.

Hoffman never had the authority to access R.M.’s bank account, to change that account’s address nor to cause checks to be issued, according to prosecutors.

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