'Bidder No 70', who won bogus bids for $1.8m of drilling rights, could face up to 10 years in prison

An activist who disrupted a Bush administration auction for the oil and gas industry by bidding $1.8m (£1.1m) he did not have for the right to drill in remote areas of Utah is due to be sentenced on Tuesday.

As Bidder No 70, Tim DeChristopher put in bogus bids and won drilling rights to 14 parcels of land at the auction, seen at the time as a last scramble by the Bush administration to open up wilderness lands to oil and gas extraction.

The action made DeChristopher a hero to some environmentalists, but he could face up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine following his conviction last March of defrauding the government.

"It is all up the judge. He can pretty much do what he wants," DeChristopher, an economics student, said in a telephone interview.

But he added: "I do think I will serve some time in prison. That is what I think will be the next chapter in my life."

Sentencing was scheduled for 3pm Utah time, or 10pm UK time on Tuesday.

The severity of the sentence, in all likelihood, will be determined by negotiations between DeChristopher's legal team and the prosecution on the extent of financial damage caused by his bogus bidding.

The prosecution is pushing for four-and-a-half-year term, arguing that an example needs to be made of DeChristopher as a deterrent to other activists. DeChristopher's legal team is urging a suspended sentence or probation.

DeChristopher said he did not have a clear plan when he turned up at the Bush administration's oil and gas leasing auction in Salt Lake City in December 2008.

"At the time I went in with a very direct action kind of mindset thinking that if I can cause enough delay, stop this action and keep oil in the ground, then that would be worth it," he said.

He had come straight from writing one of his finals, unshaven and in an old down jacket. "I certainly didn't look like anyone who was there," he said. "I didn't pretent to be an oil executive or anything."

Officials from the federal Bureau of Land Management asked if he wanted to bid. DeChristopher said yes, still thinking at that point that he just wanted to shout something or cause a disruption.

But by the time the auction was over, DeChristopher had driven up prices on some parcels and made winning bids on 14 pieces of land – some of it near national parks. He knew he had no money to pay for it.

The Obama administration later cancelled most of the sales, because of doubts about Bush's leasing plan.

However, the judge, Dee Benson, refused to allow DeChristopher's lawyers to argue that the auction had been cancelled.

DeChristopher, meanwhile, began acquiring a following on campuses and among an older generation of activists. He also founded a civil disobedience group, Peaceful Uprising.

"Tim is a hero to me," Peter Yarrow, the folk singer, and member of Peter, Paul and Mary, wrote in an article in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that likened DeChristopher to the leaders of the civil rights movement.

"Throughout American history, acts of civil disobedience have led to change. Think about the Underground Railroad that helped escaped slaves to freedom, or about the courageous actions of people like Rosa Parks, who refused to stay in the back of the bus simply because of their skin color. Without this kind of defiance of unjust laws, our country would likely still be denying people of colour basic freedoms."