The Latest on a fugitive Kentucky lawyer captured in Honduras, where he fled during sentencing for Social Security fraud (all times local):
12:50 p.m.
Officials in Honduras say a fugitive Kentucky lawyer who disappeared six months ago after pleading guilty to massive Social Security fraud is on his way back to the United States.
Eric Conn was handed over to the FBI on Tuesday, a day after his capture by a SWAT team as he came out of a restaurant in the coastal city of La Ceiba.
Spokesman Jorge Galindo of the country’s Technical Agency of Criminal Investigation said they left Honduras on a private plane.
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10:55 a.m.
A fugitive Kentucky lawyer who disappeared six months ago before facing a prison sentence for his central role in a massive Social Security fraud case has been captured in Honduras and will be returned to the U.S., officials said.
Eric Conn was captured by a SWAT team as he came out of a restaurant in the coastal city of La Ceiba, the Honduras public magistrate’s office said Monday, crediting “arduous intelligence, surveillance and tailing by the agents.”
Conn’s capture was cheered by his former clients and their families, who have struggled to make ends meet while fighting to keep their Social Security disability checks.
“That’s wonderful,” said Donna Dye, whose husband was among Conn’s clients in Appalachia. “I never thought they would catch him. He let people like my husband have trust in him, and he let that down.”
U.S. federal agents spent months tracking Conn, who cut off his electronic monitor and fled in June.
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