Mona Shafer Edwards / AFP - Getty Images file

This Sept. 27 courtroom drawing shows Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in court on probation violation charges in Los Angeles.

A California man who was behind an anti-Muslim film that spurred violent protests in the Middle East was sentenced on Wednesday to one year in prison for violating the terms of his probation stemming from a 2010 bank fraud conviction.

Mark Basseley Youssef, a 55-year-old Egyptian-American, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder after he admitted four of eight alleged violations including obtaining a fraudulent California driver's license.

Youssef served most of a 21-month prison term in the bank fraud case. Federal authorities wanted Youssef to serve two years for the violations.

None of the violations had to do with the content of "Innocence of Muslims," a 13-minute film that mocks the prophet Mohammad as a religious fraud, pedophile and a womanizer. The movie sparked a torrent of violence in Libya and other parts of the Middle East, and dozens died.

Federal authorities have said they believe Youssef is responsible for the film, but they haven’t said whether he was the person who posted it online. He also wasn’t supposed to use any name other than his true legal name without the prior written approval of his probation officer.

At least three names have been associated with Youssef since the film trailer surfaced — Sam Bacile, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Youssef. Bacile was the name attached to the YouTube account that posted the video.

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Mona Shafer Edwards / AP

This Sept. 27 courtroom sketch shows Mark Basseley Youssef, right, talking with his attorney Steven Seiden in court. Youssef was behind an anti-Muslim film that sparked violence in the Middle East.

Updated at 5:44 p.m. ET: LOS ANGELES -- A California man who was behind an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent protests in the Middle East denied on Wednesday he violated his probation stemming from a 2010 bank fraud conviction. 

U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder ruled that Mark Basseley Youssef will remain in custody and scheduled an evidentiary hearing for Nov. 9. 

Youssef, 55, has been in a federal detention center since Sept. 28 after he was arrested for eight probation violations and deemed a flight risk by another judge. Prosecutors said Youssef lied to his probation officers about his real name and used aliases. 

Youssef answered "deny" eight times when the judge asked him to respond to the allegations, which include lying to the probation officer about his role in the making of the controversial 13-minute "Innocence of Muslims" movie clip.

Youssef fled his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos and went into hiding when violence erupted in Egypt on Sept. 11 over the trailer of "Innocence of Muslims" that was posted on YouTube. The trailer depicts Mohammad as a religious fraud, womanizer and pedophile.

The unrest spread, killing dozens, and enraged Muslims have demanded severe punishment for Youssef, with a Pakistani cabinet minister offering $100,000 to anyone who kills him. The violence coincided with a separate attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

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Youssef's attorney, Steven Seiden, asked the court during Wednesday's brief hearing that his client be taken out of protective custody at the federal prison and released into the general population. Snyder ordered the prosecutor to meet with personnel at the federal Bureau of Prisons to determine whether that can be done, Southern California Public Radio reported.

"My client was not the cause of the violence in the Middle East," Seiden said after Wednesday's hearing. "Clearly, it was pre-planned and it was just an excuse and a trigger point to have more violence."   

Youssef, a Christian originally from Egypt, was convicted of bank fraud in 2010 and sentenced to 21 months in prison. After he was freed, he was barred from using computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer. He also wasn't supposed to use any name other than his true legal name without the prior written approval of his probation officer.   

"It will be interesting to see what the judge does and what the reaction is around the world,'' Stan Goldman, a Loyola Law School professor, told Reuters.    

Goldman said attorneys for Youssef could argue the terms of his 2011 release from prison did not apply directly to his recent activities, in which people associated with the film have said he misrepresented himself.  

"It's not exactly like an armed robber on probation, getting caught with an automatic weapon in his possession. It's a little more technical,'' Goldman said.

At least three names have been associated with Youssef since the film trailer surfaced -- Sam Bacile, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Youssef.   

Court documents show Youssef legally changed his name from Nakoula in 2002, but he never told federal authorities while he was being prosecuted for check fraud. Orange County Superior Court documents show he wanted the change because he believed Nakoula sounded like a girl's name.   

Youssef sought a passport in his new name but still had a California driver's license as Nakoula, authorities said.   

Authorities said Youssef used more than a dozen aliases and opened about 60 bank accounts and had more than 600 credit and debit cards to conduct the check fraud scheme.   

Bacile was the name attached to the YouTube account that posted the video.

The probation issues were the latest of Youssef's legal woes. Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress who says she was duped into appearing in the anti-Islam film, has sued him, identifying him as the film's producer. Garcia also named YouTube and its parent company Google as defendants.   

Google has refused to remove the film from YouTube, despite pressure from the White House and others, though the company has blocked the trailer in Egypt, Libya and other Muslim countries.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON -- An American Coptic Christian activist whose California TV facility was used to make an anti-Islam film that touched off protests across the Muslim world said he was deceived by the film's producer about its inflammatory content. 

In a statement posted on the blog of a prominent American anti-Islamic activist, Joseph Nassralla, founder of a Duarte, California-based group called Media for Christ, said he was a victim of "disinformation and smear" and the film's principal producer had altered its content without his knowledge. 

Slideshow: Anti-U.S. protests rock Mideast, Asia and northeast Africa

Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

Launch slideshow

Media for Christ operates a Christian satellite TV station called The Way TV, according to its website and tax return. 

Nassralla said he was contacted last year by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, whom he described as the film's producer, with a plan to make a film about the persecution of Christians in Egypt. 

Nakoula, who has a criminal record for bank fraud and drug offenses, was briefly questioned last weekend by federal authorities about possible probation violations. He was later released and has gone into hiding. 

Nassralla said in his statement that in explaining his film project, Nakoula had said the film would be called "Desert Warrior" and would "examine the culture of the desert and how it is related to what is going on right now." 

The statement was posted on the website Atlasshrugs2000, which is run by Pamela Geller, an activist who has organized anti-Islamic protests and events, including demonstrations opposing construction of an Islamic center near the site of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. 

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There was no way to independently confirm Nassralla's account. 

An attorney representing Nakoula in the investigation by probation officials declined to comment on Nassralla's statement, saying he was aware of the blog post but had not had a chance to discuss it with his client. He said Nakoula or his representatives may issue a statement in the future. 

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Nassralla, who spoke at two rallies in 2010 and 2011 organized by Geller, said Nakoula "needed a place to film. So I let him use my facility." 

"That is all I did, and is the full extent of my involvement with this project. Nakoula used my facility for ten days. Media for Christ employees were given a vacation during that time, because Nakoula was using the facility and so there was no work for them. There was only one Media for Christ employee who remained, to answer phones for the ministry," Nassralla said. 

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There was no sign of activity at the small studios of Media for Christ, located in a nondescript office park behind a Walmart store in suburban Duarte, during two visits last week by a Reuters reporter. 

On both occasions the doors were found locked and knocks went unanswered. A woman who worked at an office next door said she had not seen any employees there in recent days. 

Nassralla said he later discovered that Nakoula, using the name "Sam Bacile," had used Media for Christ's name without his permission to obtain an official permit for making the film.

'We were shocked'
After accounts of the film began circulating in Egypt and other Muslim majority countries, the amateurish production -- which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer and a fool -- set off a chain of violent protests and attacks on U.S. and other Western embassies in the Middle East and North Africa. 

In his statement, Nassralla said Nakoula had "filmed his movie not only at my ministry location, but in Nakoula's own home (which reporters located by getting the address from the actors), and in another facility for outside scenes that was included in the permit, Blue Canyon." 

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Nassralla also said that behind his back, Nakoula had "altered the film without anyone's knowledge, changing its entire focus and dubbing in new dialogue. He edited it." 

"The final product, 'Innocence of Muslims,' bore no resemblance to the film I thought he was making, or the film the actors thought they were creating. We were shocked," Nassralla said. 

In an introduction to Nassralla's statement, Geller said that she had last seen him at an event in June in California, and that now he was being "hunted like an animal for speaking critically about Islam." 

Nassralla "is currently in hiding after multiple death threats from Muslims because of his purported role in producing this video," she said. 

In an exchange of emails with Reuters last weekend, Geller suggested that if Nakoula was arrested, that would represent an attempt to impose strict Islamic Sharia law in the United States. 

"He will not be in prison for fraud or some probation violation, but for blasphemy. This is Shariah enforcement in America," she said. 

In a later email, however, Geller expressed disappointment over Nassralla's account of his dealings with Nakoula. But she added, "That would not make (Nakoula) any less a political prisoner." 

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