A man who renounced his Pakistani citizenship while living in the United Kingdom only to be expelled from that nation for a string of larcenies was convicted of similar offenses in Boston this week and sentenced to five years in prison, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

ASAD REZVI (D.O.B. 5/30/55) of Salem was convicted yesterday of two counts of larceny over $250 and one count of larceny under $250 for the thefts of computer equipment from Massachusetts General Hospital in February and April 2008. In light of a nine-page record with convictions for other theft-related offenses, Assistant District Attorney Megan O’Rourke recommended that he be sentenced as a common and notorious thief under Ch. 266, Sect. 40, of the Massachusetts General Laws, which would expose him to sentences up to 20 years in state prison.

Suffolk Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Donovan declined that recommendation, and O’Rourke recommended a prison term of four and a half to five years on one larceny count, a consecutive three- to five-year term on the second, and three years of probation upon his release. Donovan imposed a term of four to five years in prison with three years of probation upon his release.

Reciting Rezvi’s record, O’Rourke noted that Rezvi’s first conviction came in 1980 on federal fraud charges. In the decades that followed, O’Rourke said, Rezvi has amassed a nine-page criminal record with convictions in Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk counties. He currently has a pending case in Essex County.

O’Rourke also told the court that Rezvi left his native Pakistan for the United Kingdom and renounced his prior citizenship. The United Kingdom later expelled him, however, after he committed larceny- and theft-related offenses in that nation. US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials held him in federal custody for about a year while his Suffolk case was pending, O’Rourke said; they later released him back to state custody.

O’Rourke proved during the three-day trial that Rezvi stole computers, monitors, office equipment, and electronics from MGH on at least two dates in March and April 2008. A search warrant executed on his Salem home later that same year led to the recovery of five laptop and desktop computers, doctors’ lab coats, phones, printers, printer cartridges, and various ledgers, paperwork, and CDs containing patient information.

Rezvi was represented by attorney John Courtney.