A prominent eye surgeon who co-owns laser eye surgery offices in Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest was sentenced to 20 years behind bars Thursday for hiring a hit man to kill his B.C. business partner.
Dr. Michael Mockovak was found guilty last month of solicitation to commit the murder of Port Alberni native and former brother-in-law Dr. Joseph King, his longtime partner in the Clearly Lasik eye surgery center.
King resides in Washington State but divides his time between offices in the U.S. and Canada, including clinics in Burnaby and Victoria.
Mockovak's lawyers tried to persuade the judge to be lenient during Thursday's hearing at King County Superior Court, saying their client endured a lifetime of stress and abuse, from childhood sexual assault to divorce and recent professional troubles.
The judge disagreed, handing the doctor the maximum penalty for his crimes.
King, his intended victim, spoke at sentencing, saying his would-be killer had no right to leave "his wife a widow, his children fatherless and his parents heartbroken."
Prosecutors told the judge that Mockovac chose murder "out of greed and an overwhelming desire to run the business his way."
Senior prosecutor Susan Storey said Mocovak would collect a $4-million life insurance policy on King if he was killed. She also claimed the doctor felt his partner was greedy and cheating him out of profits from their business.
According to court documents, Dr. Mockovac approached one of his employees hoping to find someone to kill his partner because things weren't going well as the pair split up the company.
But instead of arranging a hit man, Daniel Kultin went to the FBI and became the informant that built the damning case against him.
Kultin told the doctor he had connections to contract killers in Los Angeles that could do the job. He and Mockovac met in a washroom at a soccer complex in Tukwila, Wash., where the informant wore an FBI recording device.
During the meeting, Mockovac gave the employee a colour photo of King and his family. Mockovac also put down a $10,000 deposit on the hit, with a promise of another $15,000 after the deed was completed.
Court documents show that Mockovac supplied the informant with a post-it note detailing King's flight details to Sydney, Australia. The doctor told his employee that King would likely run on the beach alone and that it would be a good opportunity to kill him.
FBI members arrested Mockovac at his local gym five days later.
During trial, the accused's laywer said he only joked about killing his partner and that his client was the victim of entrapment, and a government set-up.
King told authorities that he and Mockovak had met while working in California and later became business partners. They lived within a few blocks of each other and King said Mockovak even knew the alarm codes to his home.
With files from Komo News
