Corruption

Let it ride! Navy officer funded high-stakes poker habit with almost $3 million in stolen government cash

“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned,” Paul Newman says in “The Color of Money.”

Unfortunately for one Navy officer based in Virginia Beach, he neither won nor earned the $2.7 million he stole from the government to fund a lavish life of high-stakes poker, flashy cars and a second home — and Fat Leonard wasn’t even involved.

Lt. Randolph Prince, 45, was sentenced to more than four years behind bars for swindling the exorbitant sum by directing his unit’s supply contracts for “inert training aides” to fictitious companies run by his accomplices, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.