An Anchorage couple has been sentenced on their convictions of conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service over 15 years in what a federal judge called "disgusting behavior," according to the U.S. attorney. Prosecutors said Eugene Warner, 66, and his wife Lorna Warner, 67, for years tried to evade paying their debts, hid their assets from their creditors and prevented creditors from collecting.

They then failed to disclose those assets to the IRS, omitting in tax returns property and bank accounts they owned, prosecutors said. They also at one point falsely claimed the IRS owed them $1.5 million, prosecutors said.

At their sentencing, Chief U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline expressed disbelief that the defendants, former public school teachers, would exhibit such "bizarre and disgusting behavior" for so long.

He sentenced Eugene Warner to 37 months in prison and fined him $15,000. Lorna Warner was sentenced to five years of probation, including 10 months of home confinement, and fined $8,000.

They were also ordered to file accurate returns from 1991 through the present and to pay back their debts.

Both have previous convictions in 1997 of obstructing the IRS for which they were sentenced to 18 months in prison.