When Sholom Rubashkin was sentenced to 27 years in prison for financial fraud, it was two years more than prosecutors had sought. It was also an unusually tough sentence compared to those of high-profile, white-collar criminals, such as Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski.

Rubashkin, a former vice president of Agriprocessors, an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse, was also ordered to pay $31 million restitution as part of his 2010 conviction.. Rubashkin’s trial attorney, Guy Cook, plans to appeal.

“It’s unfair and excessive and is essentially a life sentence for a 51-year-old man,” Cook said.

An appeal would expand the controversy surrounding the case, which includes letters from six former U.S. attorneys general writing to the judge, assailing the prosecutors’ logic in seeking such a long sentence.

“Most of the murderers that I prosecuted got less time in prison than Sholom Rubashkin is sentenced to right now,” adds another Rubashkin attorney, Mark Weinhardt.

Rubashkin oversaw the plant in Postville, Iowa that gained attention in 2008 after a large-scale immigration raid in which authorities detained 389 illegal workers. The plant filed for bankruptcy months after the raid and was later sold. Prosecutors say evidence of a massive fraud scheme was uncovered during an investigation by a court-appointed trustee.

Prosecutors later charged that Rubashkin intentionally deceived the company’s lender and that he directed employees to create fake invoices in order to show St. Louis-based First Bank that the plant had more money flowing in that it really did. But Cook tried to portray Rubashkin as a bumbling businessman, who never read the loan agreement with First Bank.

“Frankly, he was in over his head,” Cook told CNBC’s American Greed. “He didn’t have the professional skills that  one would expect of a business like that.”

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