A Kula man who for years paraded around Maui pretending to be a U.S. Treasury Department special agent is going to prison for 18 months.

Abraham Kantzabedian told people, including his wife, his job as a treasury agent was to investigate terrorism.

A federal judge Wednesday sentenced Kantzabedian, 54, to the prison term for making thousands of dollars in cash deposits into his bank account in increments of less than $10,000 to evade reporting requirements.

U.S. District Senior Judge Helen Gillmor also fined Kantzabedian $10,000 and ordered him to forfeit to the government two sport utility vehicles he purchased with the money from his bank account. One of the SUVs, a 2008 Chevrolet Suburban, was accessorized to look like a law enforcement vehicle. The other SUV is a 2009 Porsche Cayenne Kantzabedian bought for his wife.

In exchange for Kantzabedian’s guilty pleas to the illegal financial transaction charges, the federal prosecutor dropped two charges of impersonating a federal employee, including one for financial gain to get a discount on the purchase of a $20,000 law enforcement dog.

Gillmor gave Kantzabedian until Dec. 27 to turn himself in to begin serving his prison term.

She said she didn’t know if she had ever had a case even remotely similar to Kantzabedian’s. She said his presentence report doesn’t explain where Kantzabedian got the money to deposit into his account nor does it explain why he impersonated a treasury agent.

His lawyer Philip Lowenthal told Gillmor that Kantzabedian got the money from different sources and because of past experiences, doesn’t trust banks and may have a proclivity for James Bond-type excitement.

Kantzabedian told Gillmor he grew up in Soviet-controlled Armenia before his father moved the family to the United States.

He told authorities when they arrested him in February that he had not had a job in the past four years and that he gets money through gambling in Las Vegas. His wife, a director at Maui Memorial Medical Center, told them her husband did not pay housing or utility bills but occasionally bought groceries and paid for their motor vehicle insurance.

Federal Prosecutor Michael Song told Gillmor that Kantzabedian is a con man who has been able to smooth-talk people into giving him money.