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SALT LAKE CITY – Former Arizona elected official accused of running an illegal adoption program in three states and smuggling dozens of pregnant women into Utah from the Marshall Islands is taken to jail .
An Arkansas federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Paul Petersen, 45, to six years in prison followed by three years on probation. The judge also ordered him to pay a fine and court costs totaling $ 105,100.
Peterson previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens for business purposes and for private financial gain in the U.S. District Court in Arkansas.
“The defendant in this case violated the laws of three states and two countries during his criminal operation,” said David Clay Fowlkes, an assistant United States attorney in Arkansas. “During the scheme, the accused lied to judges in state courts, falsified records, encouraged others to lie during court proceedings, and manipulated birth mothers into consenting to adoptions that they did not fully understand.
Prosecutors say he illegally paid female Marshals up to $ 10,000 to have their babies in the United States and give them up for adoption.
Petersen was a Maricopa County assessor and adoption attorney licensed to practice in Utah, Arizona, and Arkansas. In the past, he was a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Marshall Islands.
Utah investigators have found that several Front Wasatch hospitals have noticed an influx of Farrier women delivering and putting their babies up for adoption. All said they lived in the same West Valley house owned by Petersen.
An foster couple who visited the birth mother after giving birth told investigators the house looked like a “baby mill.”
The couple saw more than 15 pregnant women living at home, many sleeping on mattresses on bare floors. Investigators say the women, who arrived in Utah late in their pregnancy, received little or no prenatal care.
In June, Peterson pleaded guilty in Salt Lake City Third District Court to three counts of human trafficking, a third-degree felony and communications fraud, a second-degree felony. Sentencing is scheduled for next month.
Petersen resigned his elected post in Arizona in January. He pleaded guilty in this state of collaborating to obtain publicly funded health care for adoptive mothers, even though he knew the women did not live in Arizona.
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