A federal judge threw the book at a Long Island man who escaped to Asia to avoid paying $1 million in child support — slapping him with more than 2 1/2 years in prison yesterday.
Robert Sand, 51 — who had been named the nation’s worst deadbeat dad last December by federal officials — was sentenced to 31 months and ordered to pay more than $903,000 in restitution by Long Island federal Judge Joseph Bianco.
“Robert Sand literally fled the country to avoid his obligation to the children he brought into this world,” said US Attorney Loretta Lynch. “This Father’s Day will find Sand behind bars, finally being held to account for his abandonment.”
Sand got the heavy jail sentence after admitting that he fled the country about 10 years ago to avoid paying child support after ending his marriage with Lisa Sand. He left behind his two children and first went to Florida, where he sired another child — whom he also then promptly abandoned.
He soon wound up in Thailand, where he ran motorcycle and pizza businesses, officials say. He even fathered another child there.
Ultimately Sand ran into trouble with Thai authorities for falsifying a British passport and fled to the Philippines, where he was detained on immigration charges and deported back to the US late last year.
One of the people he telephoned from jail when he got back was his first wife, Lisa.
“He told me, ‘There are murderers in here. There are rapists in here. You’ve got to get me out of here.’ Like I’m his personal assistant,” Lisa Sand told The Post last December.
“He was hysterically crying. He said, ‘I want to make my life better. I screwed up my life.’ ”
But she had little sympathy.
“[He] literally went to the ends of the Earth to avoid paying child support,” she said.