Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, a physicist and former researcher at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory, was sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to sell nuclear secrets to Venezuela. The punishment, which was handed down by U.S. District Judge William P. Johnson in Albuquerque last week, puts to rest a trial and sentencing process that's dragged on since 2009. Mascheroni began working in the nuclear weapons design department of Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1979, but was laid off from the federally funded laboratory in 1988. In 2009, Mascheroni contacted a man who he believed to be a Venezuelan intelligence agent, and offered to pass nuclear secrets to the South American nation. That man was actually an FBI informant. Over a series of phone calls, Mascheroni was recorded making a number of promises about bombs he could help the country's weapons engineers build, including one featuring "an electromagnetic pulse" capable of knocking out all the power in New York City. In phone calls with his wife, Mascheroni was recorded bragging about the money and power that the sold secrets would bring him. In court last week, Mascheroni remained defiant, telling the judge -- as the Albuquerque Journal reported -- that has only passing along information that was either "completely science fiction" or that could be found easily on the Internet. "I was basically selling used cars," he told Judge Johnson. His wife, who worked as a technical writer at the Los Alamos lab from 1981 to 2010, was also sentenced for her role in her husband's conspiracy. She will spend a year and a day in prison. Even as his fate hung in the balance, Mascheroni refused to admit to wrongdoing -- claiming that he had simply been trapped and persecuted for criticizing U.S. nuclear policy. He also claimed he was not trying to help Venezuela build bombs so much as he was trying to manipulate them into funding research into his unique ideas on laser fusion. As the Guardian reported, federal prosecutor Fred Federici painted a different picture. "He was no true hero," Federici said in court during sentencing. "He was simply a man who betrayed his country."