Arizona State Official charged in human smuggling, baby adoption scheme
Paul Petersen, the Republican Assessor in Maricopa County, Arizona, was arrested and charged with multiple criminal counts including human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Those charges were levied against him in Utah, Arizona and Arkansas, after being arrested Tuesday for allegedly running a baby adoption ring for the last several years.
The charges against Petersen span the last three years and about 75 adoptions where officials say he paid pregnant women to give up their babies for adoption. Many of the women were recruited from overseas in the Marshall Islands and would live in a home owned by the Assessor until they gave birth and handed over their babies.
The expecting mothers were often crowded in the homes, with Marshallese women Petersen employed helping with things like translation, transportation, legal documents and applications for Medicaid benefits, prosecutors said.
Women got little to no prenatal care in Utah, and in one house slept on mattresses laid on bare floors in what one shocked adoptive family described as a “baby mill,” according court documents. Petersen sold the house this spring as complaints mounted from neighbors in the working-class area in suburban Salt Lake City, said new owner Alanna Mabey. ~ Fox News
Petersen and one of his cohorts, a female identified in court records as Lynwood Jenne, are looking at more than 30 criminal charges associated with their recruitment of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands, bringing those women to the States to deliver their babies and then having those babies adopted by families in the U.S. Many of the fraudulent scheme charges have to do with the pregnant women being passed off as Arizona residents so that they would be eligible to receive state health care services, according to ABC News.
Petersen is accused of bilking the state out of more than $800,000, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday. ~ USA Today
Prosecutors said that Petersen would pay $10,000 each for the pregnant women to travel to Utah to deliver their babies. After the babies were born, he’d charge American families as much as $40,000 to adopt the newborns. “During that same period, $2.7 million related to the alleged smuggling operation flowed into Petersen’s bank account, according to Utah authorities,” according to NPR.
Sean Reyes, Utah Attorney General, said that the American families that adopted the Marshallese infants are to be considered victims in Petersen’s adoption scheme and that parents that adopted those babies will not be pressured to return them. “It is heartbreaking that these families from both countries were so cruelly manipulated,” Reyes said.
The Utah Attorney General’s Office had set up a special hotline where more than 30 tips have already come in since news broke Tuesday night about Petersen’s arrest. It is staffed by investigators with the attorney general’s office and the Asian Association of Utah. The number is 801-839-5640.
~ Written by Richard Webster, Ace News Today / Connect with Richard on Facebook and Twitter
