VICE NEWS: Mesa "Family-Guy" (and Former Maricopa County Assessor) Paul Petersen Had His Judgement Day In Court

That's only one side of his double-life that makes a mockery of the much asserted commitment to "Family-Values" here in Mesa.

Here's just one update and follow-up

12 Years of Smuggling Women and Selling Their Babies Only Got This Guy 6 Years in Prison

 

Paul Petersen organized the pregnant women's flights into Arkansas, Arizona, or Utah, where they'd stay with other pregnant Marshallese women at a home he financed 

". . .An Arizona adoption attorney who spent 12 years smuggling pregnant women into the U.S. and then selling their babies at a hefty profit has been sentenced to more than six years in federal prison and fined over $100,000.

On Tuesday, 45-year-old Paul Petersen received the first of what’s likely to be three different sentences from a federal judge in the Western District of Arkansas in connection to the adoption scheme involving women from the Marshall Islands, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Petersen was arrested in connection to the scheme in October 2019. At the time, he was an assessor for Maricopa County, but he resigned from that post in January 2020 and then pleaded guilty in June.

"He subverted what should be a joyous time for everyone into a baby-selling enterprise,” District Judge Timothy L. Brooks said Tuesday, according to USA Today. “The conduct Mr. Petersen engaged in violates public policy. We don't sell babies. That is the public policy of the United States of America."

For more than a decade, Petersen was able to operate his scheme by building a network of women who kept in touch with a co-conspirator in the Republic of Marshall Islands, according to USA Today. . .While the women stayed in the U.S., Petersen worked to falsify documents about their stay in the U.S. in order to secure Medicaid to cover the expenses of the child’s birth. Petersen would also confiscate the women’s passports to ensure they’d go through with the scheme, according to the Washington Post. . .

This is not the last court appearance for Petersen. The disgraced lawyer pleaded guilty in Arizona and Utah back in June and is awaiting sentencing in both states. He will have 14 days to appeal the sentence, according to USA Today.

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RELATED CONTENT ON THIS BLOG

13 October 2019

Mesa-Native & "Family Guy" Paul Petersen Now In Federal Custody

< Here's the almost 'picture-perfect' portrayal usually put out there for public consumption by politicians or officials here in Mesa and Maricopa County - everything is happy, Happy husband with a good job, happy wife, two or more (3,4,5,6,7+) happy children, happy sun-dappled day with a golden glow all over. Life is good. Everything is wonderful - just looks great to create that clear veneer of credibility. "Mesa is a great place to raise a family and to live, work and play".
Happy days are here again! What more could anyone want? Apparently Paul Petersen, elected as the Maricopa County Assessor, wanted more than his public day job - one of the most coveted positions responsible for over $500M in personal property and real estate valuations in a county that is no stranger to land fraud. 

Petersen didn't get snagged for anything in that ripe field of schemes that's toppled so many politicians here, at least not yet. Most of the time it's somehow 'over-looked', conveniently with eyes cast-aside, deniable condoned or generally accepted as just the way we do business. No questions asked. Everybody gets their cut one way or another. __________________________________________________________________________

< Here's just one screen-grab flashed all over local, national and international news scoops showing a raid on his private $600,000 Mesa home - and here's the public fall-out with some background thrown in where it all started. . . and then there's the question almost all the time, Why is the almost constant connection here in Mesa and Maricopa County in Arizona and the state of Utah?  

Always that smile!

"Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Petersen should resign from his elected position determining the taxable value for properties in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs.
. .  Petersen served a two-year mission in the Marshall Islands for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes eyes said. He was later recruited by an international adoption agency while in law school because of his fluency in Marshallese, according to a 2013 Phoenix Business Journal story.
Paul Petersen, the Republican assessor of Arizona’s most populous county, was charged in Utah, Arizona and Arkansas with counts including human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
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Always that smile!

BLOGGER NOTE: Any reasonable person might ask where might Paul Petersen be more tempted for personal financial gains - if he didn't get caught -  than the $2,700,000 for 75 adotions earned from his private adoption attorney practice.
< Take a look at the cash value involved in his duties as public official;: $508 B

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...but let's get back to what's grabbing all the public's attention when other things don't get looked at, at least for what's investigated now in the commission of crimes at the present time.

“The commoditization of children is simply evil,” said Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes.
The adoptive parents are considered victims along with the birth mothers, and no completed adoptions will be undone, authorities said
The charges span about three years and involve some 75 adoptions. Investigators also found eight pregnant women from the Marshall Islands in raids of his properties outside Phoenix, and several more are waiting to give birth in Utah, authorities said. . .

Petersen charged families $25,000-$40,000 per adoption and brought about $2.7 million into a bank account for adoption fees in less than two years, according to court documents.
Petersen’s Mesa, Arizona, home is worth more than $600,000 and located in an affluent, gated community.

Arizona GOP Official Charged In Baby-Selling Case

The National Memo | Sunday, October 13, 2019

29 December 2019

Maricopa County Board of Supes Turns Assessor Petersen Suspension Prosecution Over to Adel Allister

This case gets more suspicious and more intriguing all the time! Does the new County Attorney look up to the new responsibilities now thrown at her? It sure doesn't look like it in the opening image cropped from her swearing-in ceremony with Steve Chucri looking over her shoulders in the background. Her own expression doesn't appear to exude any confidence, but rather a restrained sense of purpose after she got propelled into the position when former county attorney Bill Montgomery resigned to gain a seat on the Arizona Supreme Court. Arizona politics at its best!

O Lordy!! This case is getting more suspicious all the time ... there are now more "revelations" brought into the light of public scrutiny that appears be missing on salient data and details and the skewed focus of media attention.
Last Friday reports were in that Paul Petersen's county-owned Microsoft Surface Pro notebook had been 'wiped-clean' of data not just once but on two occasions - in the office! 

In a sprawling county where Rampant Unrestrained Real Estate Speculation is King - and the Main Driver of The Economic Engine - attention has instead turned to the allegations of private for-profit adoptions by Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen whose public office [daytime job] is responsible for valuations and recordings exceeding over $508,000,000,000 in transactions.

Media reporting have somehow stayed clear of the 'Big Elephant' and the BIG TEMPTATION that runs with getting appointed and elected to the office of the Maricopa County Assessor's Office.
There's just too much at stake . . .but let's leave that to another day.
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(Image insert: Group photo opp with Steve Chucri, and newest member Jack Sellers to the left >)

Supervisors uphold Petersen’s suspension, ask county attorney to seek his removal from office

By Jeremy Dude December 27, 2019 
(Last Updated: December 27, 2019 2:41 pm

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors upheld indicted assessor Paul Petersen’s suspension and took things a step further by asking the county attorney’s office to seek his removal from office based on information gleaned Petersen’s laptop computer.

Board Chairman Bill Gates on Friday said “shocking” documents and messages related to Petersen’s private law and adoption practices demonstrated that the assessor had neglected his official duties, as the supervisors concluded when they suspended him in late October. That information also showed that Petersen was guilty of “willful misconduct in office,” Gates said, for which the county attorney can seek an official accusation from a grand jury. If convicted, Petersen would be removed from office. . .

The supervisors had been waiting to decide on Petersen’s appeal until they received a final report from an outside law firm hired to investigate the matter. The county on Friday released that supplemental report, which featured information about what investigators found on Petersen’s laptop,