CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Fraudulent bookkeeping last year crushed Democrat Burt Cohen’s U.S. Senate hopes; now the man responsible for it faces a prison term.

Jesse Burchfield, 32, of Sacramento, Calif., pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to one count of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission. Burchfield has been in California since quitting the campaign in June 2004, around the time Cohen aides realized they were unable to account for thousands of dollars in campaign cash. The discovery killed Cohen’s campaign on June 10, 2004, one day before the filing period closed.

“I look forward to justice being done,” Cohen said Monday before the hearing. “I’ve been through an unbelievable nightmare.”

According to court documents, Burchfield understated campaign expenses and overstated the amount of cash on hand by about $300,000 in filings to the commission. He faces a $250,000 fine and up to five years in prison. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Zuckerman recommended Burchfield serve one year of probation in exchange for cooperating with the commission’s civil investigation. Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 22.

Burchfield spoke little during the hearing and declined to talk to reporters afterward. Lawyer Geoffrey Nathan said the commission is investigating whether other campaign staffers were involved in the accounting scandal.

Cohen says he left campaign money matters entirely to Burchfield. “I was the candidate,” he said. “(Burchfield) kept total control of the books.”

Burchfield ran Cohen’s 2002 state Senate campaign; he managed Cohen’s U.S. Senate campaign from January 2003 through June 2004, then dropped out of sight.

Afterward, Cohen hired lawyers and accountants to comb through the campaign’s records; they found discrepancies in 2 years’ worth of quarterly and annual reports to the commission.

For example, the report for the quarter ending in June 2004 showed the campaign owed $95,000. The revised figure was $223,392.

“It was evident just looking at the facts of the case that a sort of a house of cards had been built here with the Federal Election Commission by him, and I think the writing was on the wall about that not being able to be sustained any longer,” Mark Zuckerman, an assistant U.S. attorney, said Monday before the hearing.

No campaign money is missing, Zuckerman said. Cohen’s campaign reported $209 cash on hand and more than $250,000 in debt in a June 2005 quarterly report.

Authorities never considered Burchfield a fugitive, though for a time, campaign officials didn’t know where he was.

“I don’t think that he left town to avoid or to flee from prosecution,” Zuckerman said. “Almost from the outset of our involvement in this case, we knew where he was.”

Cohen was considered a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination to oppose veteran Republican Sen. Judd Gregg. Doris “Granny D” Haddock, a longtime activist for campaign finance reform who was then 94, filed on the last day to oppose Gregg and won the nomination. Gregg beat her 66 percent to 34 percent.