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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Utah AG's office charges Arizona official with human smuggling and sale of children

    Utah Attorney General’s office charges Arizona official with human smuggling and sale of children

    LOCAL (UTAH/STATE NEWS)
    Posted: Oct 9, 2019 / 12:00 PM GMT-0600 / Updated: Oct 9, 2019 / 12:43 PM GMT-0600

    SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 News) – An elected official in Arizona was charged with 11 felonies in Utah including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud.

    Paul D. Petersen was arrested in Arizona Tuesday following charges by the Utah Attorney General’s Office.


    Petersen is an adoption lawyer licensed in Utah and Arizona and is the elected County Assessor for Maricopa County.


    The AG’s office alleges Petersen ran an illegal adoption scheme where he “recruited, transported, and offered payment to pregnant Marshallese women to give their babies up for adoption in the United States.”


    The United States and the Marshall Islands have an agreement that prohibits this type of international adoption.


    Investigators say Petersen “failed to disclose the compact and other material aspects of his scheme to adoptive parents who paid him to facilitate their adoptions.”


    Petersen is believed to have transported more than 40 pregnant Marshallese women into Utah over the last three years. He faces charges for related offenses in Arkansas and Arizona.


    “Petersen’s illegal adoption scheme exploited highly vulnerable groups in two countries—the birth mothers and families in the Marshall Islands and the adoptive parents here in Utah,” said Attorney General Sean Reyes in a statement. “It is heartbreaking that these families from both countries were so cruelly manipulated.”


    Chief Criminal Deputy Spencer Austin said investigators were first tipped off by concerned hospital workers cold-calling the human trafficking tip line.

    “We always say, ‘If you see something, say something.’

    I think these charges prove that if you do say something, we will listen. We will use every resource at our disposal to put a stop to these horrendous crimes,” said Austin.


    The Utah Attorney General’s Office has set up a hotline to assist anyone affected by Petersen’s alleged offenses: 801-839-5640. Caseworkers with the Refugee and Immigrant Center – Asian Association of Utah are in place and ready to help any victims of this scheme.


    The Attorney General’s Office will hold a news conference on Wednesday, October 9, 2019 at 12:00 PM to discuss the case. Further details will be released at that time.

    https://www.abc4.com/news/local-utah...e-of-children/

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    AG: Maricopa County assessor illegally flew pregnant women to U.S.; 8 found in Mesa h

    AG: Maricopa County assessor illegally flew pregnant women to U.S.; 8 found in Mesa house

    Jessica Boehm, Lily Altavena and Uriel J. Garcia, Arizona RepublicPublished 11:53 a.m. MT Oct. 9, 2019 | Updated 7:35 p.m. MT Oct. 9, 2019

    Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen, in his private-sector career as an adoption attorney, arranged for 28 pregnant women from the Republic of the Marshall Islands to travel to Arizona to place their children for adoption over the past four years, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Wednesday.

    It is illegal for Marshallese women to travel to the United States for the purpose of adoption.

    It's also illegal to scam Arizona's Medicaid system, which Brnovich alleges Petersen did when he helped these women illegally access state-funded medical benefits to the tune of $814,000.


    Paul Petersen (Photo: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office)

    Petersen and a co-defendant, Lynwood Jennet, were indicted in Arizona on Monday on 29 counts of fraudulent schemes and three counts of conspiracy, theft and forgery.

    Eight pregnant Marshallese women were found in a residence in Mesa on Tuesday night when Department of Public Safety troopers executed a search warrant, according to DPS Director Frank Milstead. There are no plans to charge the women, but it unclear what will happen to their adoption plans, Milstead said.

    A neighbor, Bella Perez, said she has lived in the neighborhood for about a year and saw “a lot of” pregnant women and women with children coming in and out of the fourplex. She thought maybe they were all part of a family living together, she said.

    When she saw several law enforcement officers in the area Tuesday, she thought it was a drug bust. Then a reporter knocked on her door, and she found out what had happened.

    "That’s crazy, that’s like a lot. How can you do that to kids?” Perez said of the allegations against Petersen.

    “It’s crazy how a neighbor of yours is doing all those things and you don’t even know.”

    The charges came out of a multistate investigation involving the Arizona Department of Public Safety, Homeland Security Investigations and the Utah Attorney General’s Office, according to the Arizona Attorney General's Office.

    The Utah attorney general charged Petersen with 11 other felonies, including communications fraud, human smuggling and sale of a child.

    He also faces 19 federal charges, filed in the U.S. District Court for western Arkansas, related to allegations he illegally brought four people to the United States who continue to reside there.

    An investigation by Honolulu Civil Beat last year questioned the legality of the adoptions Petersen administered.

    Petersen, who is member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, served his church mission in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, according to court documents.

    The Republic of the Marshall Islands is located near the equator in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the Philippines. It has a population of about 53,000 people.

    The Arizona charges against Petersen
    The Arizona Attorney General's Office investigation focused on Medicaid fraud. The indictment alleges Petersen illegally obtained medical services for the women, falsely claiming the women were Arizona residents.

    Milstead said DPS began investigating Petersen's adoption practices in December after a state trooper was tipped off by a friend who considered adopting through Petersen's office but was concerned about the legitimacy of the adoption process.

    The Arizona case involves actions dating to November 2015, but according to court records, Petersen has arranged Marshallese adoptions since 2005.

    Milstead said he expects the DPS to recommend other charges to the Attorney General's Office.

    According to court records, the 28 pregnant women identified by Arizona investigators followed a similar adoption pattern:

    *Petersen paid individuals in the Marshall Islands to help locate pregnant women interested in adoption. He then matched them with adoptive families in the U.S.
    *Petersen paid the pregnant women $1,000 per month while they were pregnant in the U.S. and covered other expenses. Some birth mothers were promised up to $10,000 to place their unborn child for adoption.
    *He charged the adoptive families about $35,000 per adoption, claiming this included the birth mother's medical costs.
    *Petersen sent money to the pregnant women in the Marshall Islands to purchase passports.
    *Petersen paid for the women to fly to Phoenix and stay in a house he owns for the duration of their pregnancy. In some instances, the women gave birth within days of arriving in Arizona. In other cases, they were in the state as long as six months.
    *Shortly before the women gave birth, Petersen or his associates assisted her in signing up for Medicaid benefits, falsely stating they were Arizona residents.
    *After the women gave birth and the adoption was complete, Petersen paid for them to fly back to the Marshall Islands or to other states — most often Arkansas.

    Brnovich said Wednesday that his office believes most of the children born in Arizona were adopted to out-of-state families.

    Petersen is accused in the indictment of illegally obtaining services from Arizona's Medicaid system for the women, falsely claiming the women were Arizona residents. Petersen is accused of bilking the state out of more than $800,000, the Arizona Attorney General's Office said Wednesday.

    "The scheme in this case fraudulently represented the pregnant women in question were residents of Arizona in order to obtain medical services by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System because without residency Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System services cannot be obtained," the indictment reads.

    Brnovich said the Arizona investigation focuses solely on the alleged fraud to the state's Medicaid system and stressed that his office was not pursuing families who adopted children through Petersen's law office.

    "It's unfair to the adoptive parents, and it's also unfair to the hard-working Arizona taxpayers," he said.

    According to his website, Petersen charges $40,000 per adoption.

    Petersen also serves as general counsel for Bright Star Adoptions, an agency that operates out of the same building as his law office, according to his website.

    Linda Henning Gansler is listed on the website as the director of Bright Star Adoptions. A woman who identified herself as "Linda" answered the agency's phone Wednesday but would not comment on the agency's relationship with Petersen.

    After Petersen was arrested, prosecutors were concerned about a flight risk. Petersen's cash bond was set at $500,000 in his initial court appearance Tuesday night.

    He was asked to surrender his passport at his next court appearance, which was scheduled for Oct. 15.

    Three charges against him, conspiracy, theft and one of fraudulent schemes, are higher-level Class 2 felonies. The forgery charge is a Class 4 felony, and the other 28 fraud changes are Class 5 felonies.

    An attorney for Petersen did not respond to a request for comment.

    Utah case: 'The commercialization of children'
    The Utah attorney general alleged that Petersen recruited more than 40 pregnant women from the Marshall Islands over the past three years and transported them to Utah, where they were paid to give up their children for adoption in the U.S.

    Petersen is facing 11 felony charges in Utah.

    The state’s investigation centered on claims of human smuggling, Sean Reyes, Utah’s attorney general, said during a news conference Wednesday.

    "The commercialization of children is illegal and the commoditization of children is simply evil," he said.

    Callers to the state attorney general's human trafficking tip line in October 2017 reported suspicious births and adoptions involving Marshallese women in Utah hospitals, sparking the investigation, Reyes said.

    The agency eventually reached out to other states.

    Leo Lucy, chief investigator with the Utah attorney general’s office, called Petersen’s operation a “large-scale adoption fraud scheme.”

    Between December 2016 and September 2018, a little more than $2.7 million was deposited into a bank account Petersen gave adoptive families for wire transfers, according to Utah court documents. Most of the transfers included notes indicating they were payments for adoptions.

    Two adoptive parents in Utah told investigators that they visited a birth mother at a house owned by Petersen in a Salt Lake City suburb, according to the court documents. They saw 15 or more pregnant women in the house; some appeared to sleep on mattresses on a bare floor, court documents said. One of the parents remarked to the investigator that Petersen's adoption operation seemed like a "baby mill."

    Prosecutors in Utah are not questioning completed adoptions, Reyes said. His office does not anticipate any overturned adoptions as a result of the case.

    “We have no interest ... in interfering in any adoptions that have taken place,” he said.

    However, investigators noted that some adoptions through Petersen’s firm are still pending and people involved in those adoptions are “very concerned.”

    It’s unclear how Utah state agencies will handle the pending adoption cases.

    Since news of the charges broke, Lucy said the attorney general’s office has received more than 30 phone calls, many from potential victims that could lead to further investigation and possibly more charges. The office’s hotline is 801-839-5640.

    Reyes said those victims included birth mothers, children and adoptive parents.

    Reyes said that he believes prosecutors will successfully prove the charges in court. If the charges are found to be true, he said it would be extremely disappointing for the people of Maricopa County, who elected Petersen.

    Arkansas U.S. Attorney: 'Purest form of human trafficking'
    The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas detailed the activities of Petersen and his co-defendant there, Maki Takehisa. Authorities characterized their operation as a scheme to defraud and take advantage of Marshallese women and families to make quick money.

    The indictment says Petersen would offer to pay up to $10,000 to pregnant Marshallese women to travel to the U.S. to give birth to their babies and give them up for adoption.

    “Since 2014, he (Petersen) used his law license and expertise to prey not only on the women of the Marshall Islands but on the families of Arkansas who wanted nothing more than to add to their families,” said Duane Kees, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, at a news conference in Springdale, Arkansas, which was streamed online.

    Takehisa is a citizen of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

    According to federal court documents, Petersen and Takehisa had offered to pay at least four Marshallese women to give up their babies for adoption in Arkansas.

    Kees said Petersen, with Takehisa's help, had total control of the women once they arrived in Arkansas. Kees said the women were placed in a single-family home and were sometimes confined to a room.

    “He controlled what they were going to do and when they were going to do it,” Kees said.

    The 19-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Arkansas charges Petersen and Takehisa with conspiracy to smuggle the women for private financial gain; aiding and abetting the smuggling; wire fraud; mail fraud; conspiracy to commit visa fraud; and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

    Petersen and Takehisa also would help the women lie to immigration officials about why they traveled to Arkansas, the indictment says.

    As part of the scheme, Petersen would mail and file false adoption court documents in Polk and Washington counties in Arkansas, the indictment alleges.

    To cover up his role, Petersen wired money from an Arizona bank account to someone else’s bank account in Arkansas, the indictment says.

    Kees said at the news conference that at this point, there’s no evidence the women are seeking to be reunited with the babies. He said the women were not told to get pregnant. They were approached after they were pregnant, he said.

    Kees said the women described “these ordeals as being treated as property.”

    “Make no mistake,” he said, “this is the purest form of human trafficking.”

    Kees estimated between 30 and 35 adoptions a year were conducted under fraudulent circumstances.

    If Petersen is found guilty of all the federal charges in Arkansas, he could be sentenced up to 315 years in prison and be imposed a $5 million fine, Kees said.

    A criminal complaint with a probable cause statement details Takehisa’s alleged role.

    In April 2017, the FBI had received a tip that Takehisa had approached the women, who were not identified in court documents, in the Marshall Islands. U.S. State Department agents traveled to the Marshall Islands to interview the women, two of whom said Takehisa had offered to pay them $10,000 to travel to the U.S. and consent to an adoption. The complaint says Takehisa would take out the money from a bank account in her name. She also would pay for the women's travel arrangements.

    Takehisa paid a woman, identified by the initials RMJ, $6,000 after she gave birth to a baby boy on July 2, 2014, at the Willow Creek Women’s Hospital in Johnson,

    The adoption was completed six days later, the court document says.

    Another woman, identified as DJ in court documents, told the agents she lived in a house owned by Takehisa in Springdale where 10 other people lived, the complaint says.

    She told the agents she didn’t have a room or a bed to sleep in. After she gave birth, Takehisa paid her $4,000 in cash at the hospital “on the day the baby was born,” the complaint says.

    Adoption-law practice spans 15 years
    Petersen is in his second term as assessor. He won a special election in 2014 to replace Keith Russell in the job and was reelected in 2016.


    Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen (Photo: Courtesy photo)

    Before his election, Petersen served nearly eight years in the Assessor's Office working as the assessor's representative at the Arizona Legislature and as the agency's public information officer, according to his biography on the county assessor's website.

    Petersen is an active member of the Maricopa County Republican Party, the Arizona Republican Party, and a precinct committeeman in Legislative District 25, according to the bio.

    Petersen said his Mesa-based law practice focuses on "helping people all across the country in their effort to adopt children" and has done so for nearly 15 years.

    He is a 2002 graduate of the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law at Arizona State University.

    https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...sa/3920125002/
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  3. #3
    Moderator Beezer's Avatar
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    Those women need to be deported now...not one more child born here!

    Send them all back!
    ILLEGAL ALIENS HAVE "BROKEN" OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

    DO NOT REWARD THEM - DEPORT THEM ALL

  4. #4
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    How did the women in Arizona adoption scam get government health care?


    Stephanie Innes, Arizona Republic
    Published 8:00 p.m. MT Oct. 10, 2019 | Updated 8:20 a.m. MT Oct. 11, 2019


    The adoption scandal involving Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen raises serious questions about how the pregnant women he brought to Arizona were able to get government health care.

    That's because people from the Marshall Islands, where the women were from, do not qualify for Medicaid in Arizona unless they are U.S. citizens or lawful, permanent U.S. residents of at least five years. There are a few exceptions, including refugees and asylees.


    Petersen and his co-defendant Lynwood Jennet are accused of stealing from Arizona's Medicaid program and of forging documents to help pregnant women from the Marshall Islands enroll in state health insurance for low-income people.

    Anyone who enrolls in Medicaid in Arizona must also provide proof they are a state resident.


    For women who do qualify, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, which is Arizona's Medicaid program, will pay for the medical care of pregnant women who earn up to 156% of the federal poverty level. That works out to up to $19,488 per year for one mother-to-be.


    AHCCCS officials would not comment on the case.

    According to court documents, investigators have identified 29 births associated in an adoption scandal that they say swindled Arizona's Medicaid program out of more than $800,000.


    The births, court documents say, were all to women from the Republic of the Marshall Islands arranged by Petersen. Investigators say the women lived in Arizona long enough to have the babies here and then elect an adoption through Petersen.


    Paul Petersen (Photo: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office)

    Some applications for AHCCCS can be approved in real-time if no additional verification information is needed, agency spokeswman Heidi Capriotti wrote in an email. For pregnant women found eligible for AHCCCS, eligibility begins the first day of the month in which the application was submitted, she said.

    Twenty-eight women from the Marshall Islands gave birth to 29 babies in the Phoenix area between Nov. 30, 2015, and May 30 and subsequently chose adoption through Petersen, a probable cause statement filed in Maricopa County Superior Court says.


    The Marshall Islands have an international treaty with the U.S. that is known as a "compact of free association," which means they are allowed to live and work in the U.S., though they are not U.S. citizens.

    Once in the U.S., such "free association citizens" qualify for federal housing assistance, but not for Medicaid and some other federal safety-net programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.


    Under federal law, some states can waive that prohibition on federal benefits for free association citizens who are pregnant women or children and "lawfully present." Yet Arizona is not one of the states that has exercised that option.

    Some people from the Marshall Islands struggle when they move to the U.S. precisely because of the restrictions on federal benefits. The Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum is one of several groups working to bring awareness to the inability of free association citizens to qualify for government health insurance.



    The group wants Congress to correct what it calls an "error" made in the 1996 federal welfare reform law that stripped free association citizens such as those from the Marshall Islands from qualifying for Medicaid and is now, they say, contributing to health inequalities.

    The court documents do not say whether the women in Petersen's adoption scandal obtained health care solely for the birth, or whether they enrolled for comprehensive care under the AHCCCS program for pregnant women.


    If the women did enroll in comprehensive AHCCCS, it's not clear how they qualified, given the federal restrictions on people from the Marshall Islands and the required proof of legal U.S. residency for five years or more, though there are some exceptions that would allow certain non-citizens with less than five years of residency to obtain AHCCCS.


    An indictment says Petersen and co-defendant Jennet "fraudulently represented the pregnant women" by saying they were residents of Arizona in order to obtain medical services through AHCCCS.


    The indictment accuses both Petersen and Jennet of theft from AHCCCS, saying the pair provided false information to the state agency on 28 benefit applications.


    AHCCCS does have an emergency services health program that as of October served 112,514 individuals who needed life-saving medical treatment and did not have to be legal residents. However, that program does not provide comprehensive pregnancy care. Women who are in labor can't be turned away from hospitals when they give birth and hospitals would get reimbursed though an emergency fund.


    The emergency services program for all services, not just emergency births, was $141 million of the agency's $12 billion budget last year.


    Jennet was the "point of contact" for all the birth mothers and authored affidavits to the Arizona Department of Economic Security stating the women are Arizona residents, the probable cause statement says. It says she assisted the birth mothers in applying for AHCCCS at Petersen's direction.


    "AHCCCS investigators estimate the current loss to the state of Arizona for 28 currently identified birth mothers to exceed $800,000," the statement says. "All 28 women identified in this case, who have given birth 29 times in Arizona, had the delivery costs covered by AHCCCS."

    https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...en/3933312002/

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  5. #5
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    I.C.E. News Releases

    FINANCIAL CRIMES

    10/15/2019



    Maricopa County Assessor Paul D. Petersen indicted in adoption fraud scheme




    PHOENIX – Last week, a State Grand Jury indicted Maricopa County Assessor Paul D. Petersen for his alleged involvement in an adoption fraud scheme involving pregnant Marshallese woman flown in Arizona to place their baby up for adoption. Petersen is accused of using false information to place the Marshallese women on state-funded healthcare in order to pay for delivery costs, bilking the state out of more than $814,000.

    The indictment is the result of a multi-state investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, the Utah Attorney General’s Office, the Arkansas US Attorney’s Office, and the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) Office of Inspector General.


    According to the indictment, Petersen and co-defendant Lynwood Jennet purchased travel arrangements for pregnant Marshallese women to travel to Arizona for the sole purpose of placing their baby up for adoption. After the women gave birth and completed the adoption, Petersen allegedly purchased travel for the birth mothers to leave the State of Arizona. The women either moved to Arkansas or back to the Marshall Islands.


    “Crimes spread by greed targeting the vulnerable is one of the many reasons HSI and our partners work incredibly hard to root those seeking to evade law enforcement detection,” said A. Scott Brown, Special Agent in Charge of HSI Phoenix. “This investigation spanned three states and the Marshall Islands, as we collaborated with multiple agencies in a case that confirms that no one is above the law.”


    In 1983, the United States entered into a Compact of Free Association with the Republic of the Marshall Islands, which prohibits RMI citizens from entering the United States under the Compact if their travel is for the purpose of adoption.

    Petersen, through his adoption agency, is accused of utilizing this adoption fraud scheme in at least 29 births in Arizona between November 2015 and May 2019.


    It is alleged that the Marshallese women were not residents of Arizona at the time their AHCCCS applications were submitted and therefore ineligible for state-funded medical benefits.

    Petersen and Jennet are charged with directing these women to fraudulently misrepresent their residency status in order to obtain AHCCCS benefits.


    Petersen and Jennet are facing 32 felony counts:


    • 28 counts of Fraudulent Schemes and Practices, Class 5 felonies
    • One Count of Conspiracy, a Class 2 felony
    • One Count of Fraudulent Schemes and Artifices, a Class 2 felony
    • One Count of Theft, a Class 2 felony
    • One count of Forgery, a Class 4 felony


    The families involved in the adoptions are not the focus of the Arizona investigation. Anyone with information or questions pertaining to adoptions involving children from the Marshall Islands is urged to call the Arizona Attorney General’s Office at 602-542-8888.


    All defendants are presumed innocent until convicted in a court of law.


    Assistant Attorneys General Evan Malady and Scott Blake are prosecuting this case.


    View a copy of the indictment →


    Last Reviewed/Updated: 10/16/2019

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  6. #6
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Official quits amid charges he paid women to give up babies

    Associated PressJanuary 7, 2020

    PHOENIX (AP) — An elected official in metro Phoenix resigned Tuesday, months after being charged with running a human smuggling operation that paid pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to give up their babies in the U.S.

    The resignation of Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen came after leaders in the one of the nation's most populous counties suspended and pressured him to resign after his arrest nearly three months ago. The county's governing board voted in late December to start the process of removing Petersen, who also works as an adoption attorney.


    He is accused of illegally paying women from the Pacific island nation to come to the United States to give up their babies in at least 70 adoption cases in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas over three years. Citizens of the Marshall Islands have been prohibited from traveling to the U.S. for adoption purposes since 2003.


    In a statement released by his attorneys, Petersen proclaimed his innocence and said he never neglected his duties as assessor, responsible for determining the property values in the county. The Republican said county officials and news organizations presumed he was guilty.


    “My focus now turns to defending the allegations against me,” Petersen said.


    He is charged with human smuggling in Utah and Arkansas and defrauding Arizona's Medicaid system by $800,000 by submitting false applications for the women to receive state-funded health coverage.


    Authorities say the women who went to Utah to give birth received little or no prenatal care. They also said Petersen and his associates took passports from the pregnant women while they were in the U.S. to assert more control over them.


    Petersen has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Arizona and Arkansas. He hasn't yet entered a plea in Utah.


    His attorneys have said Petersen ran a legal adoption practice and has been vilified before his side of the story comes out. They had argued that the county governing board had no basis for suspending him.


    County Supervisor Steve Gallardo said Petersen has only himself to blame for his actions. “He took advantage of these vulnerable women for his own personal greed, and he did it on county time,” Gallardo said.


    Kory Langhofer, one of Petersen’s attorneys, said his client had to choose between focusing his time and money on holding onto his office or preserving his liberty. “It’s an unfair choice, but he has ultimately chosen to focus on the criminal allegations, rather than his job,” Langhofer said.


    Petersen previously rejected calls to resign and was fighting his 120-day unpaid suspension.


    Thousands of files related to his adoption business were discovered on his government laptop, cementing the board’s push to remove him. Content recovered on the laptop included text messages of pregnant women being threatened when they changed their minds about giving up their newborns.


    Petersen, who was paid $77,000 a year in his government job, won a 2014 special election to be assessor and was re-elected in 2016. His term was scheduled to expire at the end of the year.


    As a member of The Church of Jesus Christs of Latter-day Saints, he completed a proselytizing mission in the Marshall Islands, a collection of atolls and islands in the eastern Pacific.


    Lynwood Jennet, who was accused of helping Petersen in the scheme, pleaded guilty last month in Arizona to helping arrange state-funded health coverage for the expectant mothers, even though the women didn't live in the state. She has agreed to testify against Petersen.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/official-...214925232.html
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