By day, Frederick Moorefield Jr. was a high-ranking member of the U.S. Department of Defense, trusted with keeping the nation’s secrets and protecting troops around the globe.

But the 64-year-old Arnold resident also had a troubling hidden identity. He was part of an underground dogfighting ring, using the name “Geehad kennels.” Moorefield pleaded guilty this fall to training dogs for battle and electrocuting those who lost with jumper cables.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Moorefield to 18 months in federal prison, followed by six months of home detention. It was the first federal animal cruelty case prosecuted in Maryland, prosecutors said.

Moorefield first watched dogfighting growing up in poverty as one of 12 children in the slums of Pittsburgh, his defense attorney said. He emerged from that difficult childhood to earn a master’s degree in engineering, earning a top security clearance with the military and rising to be a deputy chief information officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

He admitted as part of his guilty plea to taking part in dogfighting for at least 20 years; federal prosecutors said they suspect it was far longer.

“He was able to shake off drugs, violence. He was able to shake it off,” defense attorney Andrew C. White said. “The one thing he couldn’t do was this.”

Prosecutors had asked for the maximum sentence of five years in prison, which would have been far above the recommended sentencing guidelines of 12 to 18 months of incarceration.

But Bennett credited Moorefield with his service to the Pentagon and lack of criminal history, while still handing down a sentence beyond the guidelines.

“You have been a model citizen but for this dark side of your life,” Bennett said.

Moorefield said he was “remorseful, sorry, ashamed, embarrassed and selfish.”

Moorefield was charged in 2023 after authorities uncovered that he was part of a private messaging group for dogfighting in Maryland, Virginia and Washington called the “The DMV Board” or “The Board.”

Its members also messaged each other to compare methods of killing dogs that lost fights, and to circulate media reports about conspirators who had been caught by law enforcement and discuss ways to minimize the likelihood that they would be discovered, federal prosecutors said.

When agents searched Moorefield’s home in September 2023, they recovered five pit bulls from large metal cages in a windowless room of his basement, authorities said. In the same room, agents said, they also found several containers of animal medication, dog food and protein powder, along with a makeshift jumper-cable device used to kill dogs that were no longer fit for fighting.

Agents seized a large piece of folded-up carpet from a shed on the property that appeared to be stained in several places with blood, authorities said, adding that Moorefield used the carpet as the floor of an arena to stage dogfights.

Authorities began investigating Moorefield’s connections to dogfighting in November 2018 after Anne Arundel County animal control officers found two dead dogs in a plastic dog food bag in Annapolis. Also inside the bag was mail addressed to Moorefield.

Animal advocates sent a petition signed by 23,000 people calling for Bennett to hand down the maximum sentence.

Moorefield’s relatives and co-workers sent 15 letters of support, with relatives talking about the steady, consistent and uplifting presence he was in their lives.

“His role in my life is probably the reason I’m not dead,” one of his brothers, who spent time in federal prison but has stayed out of trouble and become a successful entrepreneur, told Bennett.

He called the dogfighting activities “shocking and disappointing.”

“But the person I know is not the person here today,” the brother said.

Bennett called dogfighting an “ugly underbelly of society” and said he believed the public largely is not aware that it takes place. When Moorefield’s attorney, White, said it was not illegal until recent decades, Bennett noted that people used to watch gladiators fight to the death.

Moorefield said he owned his mistake.

“You’ll never see me again in any negative fashion,” Moorefield told Bennett.