ALEXANDRIA, Va. - This much is known about Anthony Joseph Tracy: He told government agents he helped 270 Somalians illegally enter the United States through Cuba. He flunked a lie detector test when he denied helping members of the Somali terror group al-Shabaab. He was some sort of informant for the federal government going back at least as far as 2002.

And on Friday, the Winchester, Virginia, man was sentenced to roughly four months in jail, equal to time served, and walked out a free man.

The case against Tracy, who spent significant time in Kenya running an illicit travel agency, is shrouded in secrecy. His sentencing hearing Friday was held in open court, but lawyers and the judge talked around the specifics of what he actually did.

In fact, his guilty plea, apparently entered earlier this year, remains under seal. So the exact nature of Tracy's misconduct remains unclear.

The few court records that are unsealed indicated that federal agents have been working feverishly for months trying to find the people that Tracy said he helped enter the U.S.

Tracy, 35, told government agents that members of al-Shabaab, a group seeking to impose strict Islamic law in Somalia that has claimed responsibility for suicide bombing attacks on United Nations facilities and other targets, were among those who contacted him for help securing phoney travel documents. Tracy denied helping them but flunked that portion of a polygraph test.

"There have been around-the-clock attempts to locate individuals through certain methods, and we are working tirelessly to corroborate some of what the defendant has said," prosecutor Jeanine Linehan told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, according to a redacted transcript of a pretrial hearing that was unsealed this week.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Cori Bassett said Friday that the agency has investigated Tracy's claims. "At this point, ICE does not have any evidence that links individuals who fraudulently obtained documents or visas from Tracy to any terrorist organizations," Bassett said in an emailed statement.

The unredacted portions of the transcript indicate that Tracy, while living in Kenya, served as an informant for ICE and at least one other government agency as far back as 2002. In a 2010 email to an associate, Tracy wrote, "i helped alot of somalis and most are good but there are some who are bad and i leave them to ALLAH...."

In the transcripts, Tracy's lawyer, federal public defender Geremy Kamens, called the al-Shabaab issue "a red herring." He said the government could not produce any proof that Tracy helped al-Shabaab, or that any of the people Tracy allegedly helped ever actually made it to the United States.

Kamens said after the sentencing that "we believe justice was served" by the sentence of time served, and that Tracy still has the right to appeal his conviction. He declined to comment on the details of the case.

Tracy, who has a wife and five children in Winchester, also married a woman in an Islamic ceremony in Kenya, according to transcripts.

Peter Carr, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment Friday because so much of the case, including the plea itself, remains under seal.