Petersen case postponed
Attorney says the officeholder has no plans to resign
Indicted Assessor Paul Petersen’s scheduled arraignment in Maricopa County Superior Court was postponed Tuesday and rescheduled for Nov. 5.
Indicted Assessor Paul Petersen’s scheduled arraignment in Maricopa County Superior Court was postponed Tuesday morning and rescheduled for Nov. 5.
Petersen, now in federal custody, was not in court to face Arizona’s charges against him, most related to alleged Medicaid fraud in an international adoption scheme. He was represented by his attorney, Matthew Long.
Long said at this time, Petersen does not plan to resign his public office and wants to go through the court process.
“We need to look at the facts. We need to look at the discovery,” Long said. “This was not a human smuggling scheme. This was not human trafficking.”
He said it was “troubling” that attorneys and politicians, who have sworn to protect the U.S. Constitution, are calling for Petersen to resign.
Petersen and a co-defendant, Lynwood Jennet, were indicted in Arizona on Oct. 7 on 29 counts of fraudulent schemes and three counts of conspiracy, theft and forgery.
Petersen also faces multiple felony charges in Utah and in federal court in western Arkansas.
Petersen is scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 29 in Arkansas on the federal charges.
Long told the court of irregular
ities related to the processing of Petersen’s case between federal and local custody that should be addressed on another day. Long, who is a longtime friend of the assessor, also said he likely would not represent Petersen in the case in the future because of personal and emotional conflicts.
Long adopted a child of his own from the Marshall Islands — but not through Petersen — and spent time in the Marshall Islands more than 20 years ago.
He said he has concerns for Petersen, the Marshallese community and due process.
According to a report by The Arizona Republic, Long was an adoption agent at one time in the Marshall Islands for Children’s House International.
In 1998, Long said he knew of girls in the islands as young as 15 years old who had two or three children.
Long said he has not had a face-toface conversation with Petersen since Oct. 8, the day of his arrest.
“He has been pulled around back and forth to different jails in the course of the week,” Long said. “So his lack of access to his attorney has been offensive.”
According to Long, he was refused access to Petersen when he was in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in the federal court building.
Long said Petersen has not had seen or talked with his family and has been on lockdown.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office alleges Petersen illegally arranged for 28 pregnant women from the Republic of the Marshall Islands to fly to Arizona, live in a house he owns and deliver their babies — paid for by the state’s Medicaid system — before placing them for adoption.
Eight women were found at a Mesa residence owned by Petersen during a raid by authorities Oct. 8.
Petersen’s cash bond initially was set at $500,000 in Maricopa County, then dropped to $100,000. He was transferred into federal custody late last week.
The county assessor, a political position that usually gets little fanfare, serves an important role to all property owners. The office is responsible for determining property values, which is how property taxes are calculated.
Petersen’s taxpayer-funded salary is about $77,000 per year.
More than 70 pregnant women from the Marshall Islands may have traveled
“He has been pulled around back and forth to different jails in the course of the week. So his lack of access to his attorney has been offensive.” Matthew Long
Attorney for County Assessor Paul Petersen
to the United States to give birth in an adoption scheme orchestrated by Petersen, court documents from three states allege.
Prosecutors allege Petersen committed a range of offenses as an adoption attorney, from wire fraud in Arkansas to human smuggling in Utah to fraudulent schemes in Arizona, 62 charges in all.
Petersen in his private-sector career has been involved in arranging adoptions from the Marshall Islands as early as 2005, although the charges involve actions starting in 2015, according to court records.
It is illegal for Marshallese women to travel to the United States for the purpose of adoption — it’s also how prosecutors claim Petersen made a living.
Adoptive parents paid anywhere from $25,000 to $41,000 for Petersen’s adoption services, according to the court records.
Petersen indicated the cost covered medical expenses. However, according to Arizona court documents, the attorney instead falsely claimed the pregnant women were Arizona residents so they could access state-funded medical benefits.
The medical costs for the 28 pregnant women total more than $800,000, according to the court documents.
Meanwhile, investigators in Utah found that Petersen took in millions of dollars in nearly two years from the adoption deals. Between December 2016 and September 2018, bank account records subpoenaed by an investigator show a little more than $2.7 million going into an account Petersen told families was for wire transfers. Most of the transfers, the investigator with the Utah Attorney General’s Office wrote, included notes that indicated they were adoption payments.
Petersen also offered money to the mothers coming from the Marshall Islands, according to the court documents. Arizona court documents state that birth mothers were promised $1,000 for every month they were pregnant in the U.S and up to $10,000 to place their child for adoption.