Vic Kohring is a former Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 State legislator

Alaska Legislature

The Alaska Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is a bicameral institution, consisting of the lower Alaska House of Representatives, with 40 members, and the upper house Alaska Senate, with 20 members...

. He was elected to seven consecutive two-year terms in the Alaska House of Representatives

Alaska House of Representatives

The Alaska House of Representatives is the lower house in the Alaska Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Alaska. The House is composed of 40 members, each of whom represents a district of about 15,673 people . Members serve two-year terms without term limits...

, beginning in 1994. Kohring represented District 14, Wasilla

Wasilla, Alaska

Wasilla is a city in Matanuska-Susitna Borough, United States and the sixth-largest city in Alaska. It is located on the northern point of Cook Inlet in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley of the southcentral part of the state. The city's population was 7,831 at the 2010 census...

.

Kohring was indicted on federal bribery and extortion charges on May 4, 2007. He, along with former state legislators Pete Kott

Pete Kott

Peter "Pete" Kott is a former Republican state representative for District 17 serving Eagle River, Alaska, in the Alaska Legislature for seven terms, from 1993 until 2007. He was Speaker of the House during his sixth term in 2003-2004...

 and Bruce Weyhrauch

Bruce Weyhrauch

Bruce Weyhrauch is a former legislator in the Alaska State House representing Juneau. In May 2007, Weyhrauch, along with fellow legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring were charged in connection with a scandal involving oilfield service company VECO attempting to buy government favors in Alaska...

, were accused of soliciting and accepting bribes from VECO, an oilfield services company. Their offices were among 20 searched by FBI agents on August 31, 2006. Kohring resigned his seat on June 20, 2007.

On November 1, 2007, a federal jury found Kohring guilty in three out of four criminal charges and acquitted on the fourth, a charge of extortion. In May 2008, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Kohring asked outgoing President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 for a pardon that was not granted.

Kohring was released on June 11, 2009. The conviction was vacated, and in 2011, Kohring agreed to plead guilty in exchange for being sentenced to time served and conditions on his release.

United States Senator Ted Stevens

Ted Stevens

Theodore Fulton "Ted" Stevens, Sr. was a United States Senator from Alaska, serving from December 24, 1968, until January 3, 2009, and thus the longest-serving Republican senator in history...

was also charged and convicted in a case that hinged, in part, on the prosecution of Kohring. Stevens' convictions, too, were eventually vacated, because of prosecutorial misconduct.