The man who ran an illegal adoption scheme in Arkansas that involved the trafficking of Marshallese women?s newborn babies will spend more than six years in prison. Paul Peterson was sentenced Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas to 74 months in prison in prison, which he will serve in […]
A former Arizona politician who admitted running an illegal adoption scheme in three states involving women from the Marshall Islands was sentenced in Arkansas to six years in federal prison. It was the first of three punishments he?ll face for arranging adoptions prohibited by an international compact. Paul Petersen, a Republican who served as metro […]
U.S. prosecutors in Arkansas will seek a 10-year prison sentence for a former Arizona politician who acknowledged running an illegal adoption scheme in three states involving women from the Marshall Islands. Prosecutors say Paul Petersen defrauded state courts, violated an international adoption compact and took advantage of mothers and adoptive families for his own profit. […]
U.S. prosecutors in Arkansas will seek a 10-year prison sentence for a former Arizona politician who acknowledged running an illegal adoption scheme in three states involving women from the Marshall Islands. Prosecutors say Paul Petersen defrauded state courts, violated an international adoption compact and took advantage of mothers and adoptive families for his own profit. […]
Deborah Wohle owns a small, neighborhood bar in Apache Junction, Arizona, called Lucky Strikes. Her business has been financially devastated by COVID-19 lockdowns, and on the one day she opened up to offer takeout services in April, she was charged with a crime. As a result, Wohle is facing thousands of dollars in fines from […]
A former elected official in Arizona who paid pregnant women as much as $10,000 to travel to the United States illegally to give up their newborn children for adoption pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a federal human smuggling conspiracy charge, the authorities said. The former official, Paul D. Petersen of Mesa, Ariz., a private adoption […]
LAUREN GILGER:?Paul Peterson has admitted to felonies in two of three U.S. states where prosecutors said he ran an illegal adoption scam involving women from the Marshall Islands. The former Maricopa County assessor pleaded guilty in Arizona and Utah late last week. And Peterson’s defense attorney says a guilty plea in Arkansas could come as […]
An Arizona attorney charged with human trafficking in an adoption-for-profit operation targeting Marshallese birth mothers plans to plead guilty to federal charges in Arkansas, his attorney confirmed Thursday. Paul Petersen, 45, pleaded guilty to related state charges in Arizona on Thursday. He was charged in Arizona and Utah state courts and indicted in federal court […]
A prostitution camp in the Marshall Islands provided many of the birth mothers caught up in former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen?s allegedly illegal adoption business, according to statements attributed to his co-defendant in a warrant to seize his assets. When she was arrested in August, Lynwood Jennet, Petersen?s co-defendant in his criminal case and […]
Rep. Walter Blackman, a 22-year Army veteran, has been in combat. Any flack he takes in the Legislature, he said, doesn?t quite compare. The Snowflake Republican is bringing this attitude into the forthcoming legislative session as he prepares to fight for a suite of bills that would reimagine how police treat low-level offenders and increase […]