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Issue: Paul Petersen

Arizona county assessor charged in adoption fraud case

Paul Petersen
Paul Petersen

 

Lynwood Jennet
Lynwood Jennet

The assessor of Arizona’s most populous county has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption, according to an Arizona court filing.
Utah also has charged Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen with 11 felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. News conferences are scheduled Wednesday morning in both Phoenix and Salt Lake City on the cases.
A call and email sent to Petersen’s attorney seeking comment were not immediately returned.
The Utah attorney general’s office says more than 40 pregnant women were transported to Utah during the past three years as part of the scheme.
“While Mr. Petersen is entitled to a presumption of innocence, our investigation uncovered evidence that he has committed horrible crimes,” Utah Attorney General Sean D. Reyes said in a statement. “Petersen’s illegal adoption scheme exploited highly vulnerable groups in two countries — the birth mothers and families in the Marshall Islands and the adoptive parents here in Utah.”
Petersen has for years run an adoption law practice in Mesa, Arizona, that involves bringing women from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. to give birth, The Arizona Republic reported. Their babies are then adopted by U.S. parents, authorities said. Petersen charged $40,000 per adoption, according to his website.
Petersen illegally obtained services from Arizona’s Medicaid system for the women by falsely claiming they are Arizona residents, the indictment said. He also violated U.S. law prohibiting citizens of the Marshall Islands from traveling to the U.S. for adoption, according to the indictment filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Lynwood Jennet was also named in the indictment. Additional information about Jennet was not immediately available.
Petersen is in his second term as assessor following a special election victory in 2014 and re-election in 2016. He served nearly eight years as the assessor’s office representative to the Arizona Legislature and as the agency’s public information officer.
An investigation last year by the Hawaii news website Honolulu Civil Beat questioned the legality of adoptions Petersen administers through his work as a private adoption attorney.

Arizona official pleads not guilty in adoption fraud case

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) — An elected official in Arizona accused of running a human smuggling scheme that brought pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. has pleaded not guilty to federal charges in Arkansas.

Authorities say Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen illegally paid the Pacific island women to have their babies in the United States and give them up for adoption.

After entering his plea in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on Tuesday, Petersen was released on $100,000 bond and ordered to wear an ankle monitor.

Petersen’s trial in Arkansas on human smuggling and adoption fraud charges is set for Dec. 9.

He also faces charges in Arizona and Utah.

He entered his plea a day after the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted to suspend him without pay for up to 120 days.

Big ideas, big plans that didn’t make it into legislation

From left, Paul Boyer and Anthony Kern.
From left, Paul Boyer and Anthony Kern.

In a legislative session that saw a record amount of bills filed in both chambers, some measures promised before or even during the session never saw the light of day.

Efforts to allow county boards of supervisors capability to successfully remove the county treasurer or assessor, remove oversight of the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program from the Department of Education in favor of the Treasurer’s Office, and even a ballot referral to legalize adult-use marijuana rather than the initiative that would accomplish the same feat all never received a sponsor.

Rep. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, said in October that he would introduce a measure allowing boards of supervisors to remove by a two-thirds vote an elected county assessor (and treasurer) who are under criminal indictment, which came in light of the indictment of former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen that same month.

Kern said he didn’t file it after all because he didn’t want to rush things and it didn’t seem like a necessary bill once Petersen resigned.

The current law only allows a board of supervisors to suspend those two elected positions for up to a period of 120 days and makes things complicated in terms of an expulsion.

Kern’s seatmate in the upper chamber, Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, did not fulfill his promise to sponsor an effort that would create a pay cap for city employees. In what started as an announcement on Twitter over frustrations with his own city government resulted in nothing.

Prior to the start of the legislative session, Boyer said he wanted to limit nearly all city employees from earning more than the governor, whose salary is $95,000. Glendale City Manager Kevin Phelps currently makes $229,500, according to The Arizona Republic’s salary database, which is already nearly 2.5 times the limit Boyer wants to install.

A beef with Phelps is a prime reason Boyer planned to introduce this legislation in the first place. He and Phelps didn’t see eye to eye when it came to covering cancer treatment for firefighters in the city, a fight Boyer has been passionate about for years.

“I don’t think anybody could say with a straight face that bureaucrats who are systematically not following the law deserve to get paid more than the governor,” Boyer said at the time.

In that same chamber, Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, told her colleagues on the floor she had concerns over how the Arizona Department of Education was running the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program. Not a new fight by any means, but this latest blow was a direct result of the department mistakenly providing records that were not properly redacted.

Allen said early in the session that the state Treasurer’s Office under Republican Kimberly Yee should have oversight of the ESA program. Neither Allen nor any other legislator sponsored an effort to give the Treasurer’s Office control, but on February 26. Allen amended her ESA bill to give partial oversight of the program to the State Board of Education.

A different promise made before the session began, but not from a lawmaker, was the Arizona Cannabis Chamber of Commerce launching its own attempt to legalize adult-use recreational marijuana, with plans to have the Legislature send it to the ballot.

It was an idea many in the marijuana industry didn’t take seriously when it was announced since there did not seem to be an appetite to have lawmakers legalize marijuana, let alone have them send it to the ballot where it would be voter protected, a concern legislators have expressed many times.

With its close ties to lobbyist Brett Mecum, all eyes shifted over to Sen. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, to sponsor the referendum, since Mecum pushed Gowan’s marijuana testing bill in 2019.

But it didn’t receive a green light.

Board upholds Petersen’s suspension, will push for resignation

This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor's Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor's Office via AP)
This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor’s Office via AP)

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Friday to uphold Maricopa County Assessor Paul Peterson’s 120-day suspension and directed the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office to pursue his removal from office.

The board based its decision on a final report submitted to them by investigators, who found on his county laptop hundreds of documents relating to an alleged adoption ring such as agreements related to adoption services, law office bank records, screenshots of threatening text messages between Petersen and Marshallese women who were paid to give their children up for adoption.  

According to the report, someone tried to wipe the county computer twice – once on October 30, a day after Petersen was released from federal custody and again on November 12, and the private attorneys who made up the investigative team suggested Petersen may have committed crimes such as tampering or destruction of public records and criminal damage for intentionally wiping the data from the computer.

County Supervisor Steve Gallardo said he was appalled at what investigators found. 

 “I’m outraged,” Gallardo said. “This is unconscionable. There’s a reason why we light this building every October purple… This is human trafficking at its best. You cannot describe it any more than human trafficking, and he did it while he was on the clock.”

Petersen stands accused in three states of paying women from the Marshall Islands to deliver their children in the U.S. and of organizing the adoptions of them to American families. He also faces charges of smuggling and adoption fraud in Arkansas and Utah and with defrauding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

The board suspended Petersen Oct. 28. Although the board held an appeals hearing on Dec. 19, it did not decide on upholding the suspension until after the final report was completed and released. The delay came about because the investigative team didn’t have his laptop. 

The final report’s findings, Gates said, were enough to support a finding of willful misconduct of office.

“The assessor obviously did not fulfill his duties when he was in custody for 20 days and I also believe that he neglected his duties as well by having documents related to the adoption practice on his county computer,” Gates said. “But beyond that, Mr. Petersen has a duty to protect county property and he failed to fulfill that duty when he allowed that county computer to be used for that private adoption practice.”

Gates and the board are asking Mr. Petersen to resign from office to save the county from spending more public money. Supervisor Hickman said he will soon ask the Maricopa County and Arizona Republican Parties to call on Petersen to resign.

His attorney, Kory Langhofer, has said in the past that he is considering suing the board as an option and has not indicated his client will resign anytime soon. If the county attorney doesn’t take action before then, the suspension will end.

Jennifer Liewer, a spokeswoman for County Attorney Allister Adel, said Adel is reviewing the board’s motion and determining her next step.

Langhofer could not be immediately reached for comment in time for publication.

This comes a week after Petersen’s co-defendant, Lynwood Jennet agreed to testify against him in a plea agreement that dropped 45 charges against her. Jennet pleaded guilty to four charges in Maricopa County Superior Court on December 19: one count of conspiracy to commit fraudulent schemes and artifices, two counts of theft and a failure to file a tax return. She also agreed to pay $1 million in restitution.

Prosecutors said Jennet, a Marshallese woman who worked for Petersen for six years, was the intermediary between Petersen and the Marshallese women and helped them fraudulently apply for Medicaid benefits.

Candidate for assessor job withdraws after plagiarism discovery

Hand writing

An applicant for the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office withdrew from consideration minutes after he was caught plagiarizing large swaths of his application to replace Paul Petersen, who resigned in early January. 

A Google search showed Michael Farrar, a former member of the Carefree Town Council who ran unsuccessfully for the House in 2010, completely lifted full passages from Forbes, the California State Association of Counties, and other websites into his application and attempted to play them off as his own. 

Each of the 12 applicants for the job – which includes two former lawmakers, an attorney at Rose Law Group and a perennial candidate – was asked 14 questions, and Farrar plagiarized his written responses to at least five of them. 

The first question on the application asked him to explain what the assessor does. 

He stole 198 words out of a 211-word definition on the California State Association of Counties site. 

“The Assessor is responsible for the creation and maintenance of all mapping/drafting activities for the Assessor’s Office and creation of new assessor parcels from final subdivisions, parcel maps, lot line adjustments, record of survey, deeds and miscellaneous documents,” both the site and his answer say. 

Only two out of five paragraphs in his response to that question did not appear to be directly plagiarized. Farrar told Arizona Capitol Times he “sent the wrong [application] over without the citations.” 

He said he withdrew his application from consideration on the morning of Jan. 30, before being confronted about the plagiarism over the phone.  

County spokesman Fields Moseley said they received a letter of withdrawal at 2:10 p.m., just three minutes after talking to the Capitol Times. Moseley said the Board of Supervisors was unaware of the plagiarism. 

Farrar said that he withdrew the application not because he was worried his plagiarism would be found out, but because he’s too busy to do the job. 

“I just can’t do it, there’s too many other things I am involved in,” Farrar said. 

In his bid to be the new assessor, Farrar got some high praise from high places. Phoenix City Councilman Sal DiCiccio, Scottsdale Mayor Jim Lane and former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson all wrote him glowing letters of recommendation.

The application also asked Farrar what it means to be a public servant, and much of his answer was lifted straight from the Thomas Edison State University website. 

“Great work and great leadership often go hand-in-hand. So when it comes to success, good leaders tend to share these five key qualities across the board that make them both competent managers and effective public servants,” he wrote in a passage lifted entirely from the website. 

He then broke his answers down into a numbered list, which he lifted from the same university website.

  1. Good leaders motivate and encourage others.
  2. Good leaders communicate clearly and listen attentively.
  3. Good leaders are trustworthy.
  4. Good leaders think critically.
  5. Good leaders are resilient.

“In the world of public policy and governance, the only constant is change. Budgets get cut. Resources shrink. People come and go. But leaders must be able to respond accordingly and continue to produce results amidst an ever-evolving landscape. Good leaders assume these challenges and develop alternative solutions. They remain positive during difficult times. And most importantly, they encourage confidence in their employees so, they too, will remain effective at the most crucial times,” he plagiarized in another passage.

In response to a question about what approach he would take to initiate a culture change in the Assessor’s Office, Farrar got creative and plagiarized from two different websites. 

His answer steals from a Forbes story titled, “How To Create A Culture Of Change” that talks about Tony Hsieh, the “the phenomenally successful CEO of Zappos” and references Xerox, Canon and Ricoh. 

He then delves into passages from the Six Sigma Quality website about the culture of change. 

The final question Farrar copied pertains to customer service. For that, Farrar used a definition of customer service from salesforce.com. “Customer service is the brand promise you offer your customers – both before and after they buy and use your products or services – that helps them have a comfortable and enjoyable experience with you,” he wrote, only changing “support” from the original text to “brand promise.”

Farrar did not appear to plagiarize anything when answering how he would work to re-establish the public’s trust as the new assessor. 

Instead, he wrote that he would “act with integrity and keep commitments and devote all my attention and time to this office without outside employment, nor conflicting business activity.” He added that as assessor he would build trust from the beginning of his relationship with every new employee. “Trust is fragile, but it can grow strong over time, if you continually pay attention to it.”

With Farrar no longer seeking the role of County Assessor, only 11 candidates remain.

County board starts process to suspend Petersen from office

Paul Petersen
Paul Petersen

Maricopa County Assessor and alleged child trafficker Paul Petersen will find out if he is suspended without pay from his elected post when the county board of supervisors votes on October 28.

Petersen is facing felony charges in three states, including Arizona, for running an illegal adoption fraud scheme.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, who met in executive session for roughly two hours today, determined they have enough reason to vote on whether Petersen should face a 120-day suspension. Under Arizona law, Petersen must have fives days notice of the vote, including the weekend. He’s in federal custody awaiting arraignment in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Arkansas.

The board, by law, can seek Petersen’s removal, but Chairman Bill Gates, who is the only supervisor to talk to media after the meeting, did not say what would happen after the 120-day period is up.

“We will cross that bridge when we get to that,” Gates said.

The Board decided to call a vote for next week based on two accounts of Petersen’s “neglect of duty,” a clause in Arizona statute that would call for a county official to be suspended.

“He is currently detained so he is unable to perform the duties of the job,” Gates said. A partially done county internal audit also found that there is a “multitude of documents” related to Petersen’s adoption business on his county computer.

Gates said he would not draw any further conclusions from there, but county policy says all employees should not be doing private work on their county computers.

“We would hope elected officials would live up to that,” he said.

A county spokesman said the audit is not yet complete, but the plan is to release it publicly once it is.

Even while Petersen was not detained, he still did not spend much time in the county office, the Arizona Republic reported. 

According to parking records, Petersen only showed up to the Assessor’s Office 53 days this year. And on those days, he would apparently only stay for an average of four hours.

Petersen’s new attorney, Kurt Altman, said recently Petersen has no intention to resign from his office.

Under state law, a suspension will take effect immediately upon a unanimous vote of the board and a replacement will be appointed. Petersen will have a right to a hearing if the vote isn’t unanimous, but it will still be the board that makes the final decision.

The board can also ask the Maricopa County Attorney to seek Petersen’s removal during the 120-day suspension. The removal process requires the county attorney to get a grand jury to allege “willful or corrupt misconduct in office” and a jury could ultimately decide whether he’s removed.

County board votes to suspend Petersen

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The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously today to suspend County Assessor Paul Petersen without pay on the grounds he’s in federal custody in Arkansas and can’t serve. 

Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said they sent Petersen a letter before the vote asking him to provide any sort of proof that he could still do his job. They also asked why and how more than 1,000 documents relating to his adoption business came to be on his county computer. That information was provided to the Board through an internal audit that should be made available to the public later today.

Gates said Petersen did not respond to their letter.

Arizona authorities arrested Petersen in early October in connection with indictments in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas on allegations he ran an illegal adoption scheme.

The process to appoint an interim County Assessor has begun, but Gates did not say how long it would take before they name Petersen’s temporary replacement, just that it would not be done today.

Petersen’s lawyer, Kurt Altman, previously told 12 News that Petersen has no plans to resign even though Gov. Doug Ducey, the entire Board of Supervisors and others have called on him to do so. Altman did not immediately respond to a request for comment today.

Gates said Petersen or his lawyer can now opt to appeal the decision.

“We will address that if it happens,” Gates said.

The Board chairman did not say whether the county plans to change the locks or remove Petersen’s access to the garage in order to keep him off the premises.

According to the state statute used to suspend the county assessor or treasurer, the Board of Supervisors may ask the County Attorney to seek the person’s removal from office after suspension by way of a grand jury.

Fields Moseley, a county spokesman, told Arizona Capitol Times that the Board and newly-appointed County Attorney Allister Adel, who was in attendance at today’s vote, have discussed all legal options, including the possibility of removing Petersen via a grand jury, but that she has not yet been asked to do so.

A spokeswoman for Adel could not comment on if Adel was asked either.

County investigators find no evidence Petersen neglected duties

This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor's Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor's Office via AP)
This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor’s Office via AP)

Investigators tasked by Maricopa County Officials to investigate Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen found no evidence he “neglected” his duties.

However, they said it’s up to county supervisors to determine whether his refusal to cooperate in the probe and his alleged misuse of county resources amount to “neglect of duty.” 

“The ultimate issue the board must decide is whether Mr. Petersen’s conduct amounts to ‘neglect of duty’ within the meaning of [statute]. As discussed above, we did not find evidence that Mr. Petersen failed to fulfill any particular statutory obligations of the County Assessor,” the investigators concluded in their report, a copy of which was obtained by the Arizona Capitol Times.

Attorney Kory Langhofer, who represents Petersen, said the report affirms his client’s argument that his suspension from office has no basis.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors had suspended Petersen without pay for 120 days on the grounds that he was in federal custody in Arkansas and could not serve.

Officials then asked former Attorney General Grant Woods to oversee the work of two private law firms hired to investigate whether Petersen neglected his duties.

Petersen is challenging his suspension, and supervisors must now weigh their decision against the investigators’ conclusions. 

“While Mr. Petersen’s conduct with respect to his misuse of county resources may give rise to criminal charges or may form the basis for removal under ARS 38-341, the board must decide whether that conduct, as well as his absence from office for twenty days and his failure to cooperate with this investigation, amounts to ‘neglect of duty,’” the investigators said in the report.

They said while county supervisors may suspend Petersen for “defalcation or neglect of duty,” the statutes do not define “defalcation” or “neglect of duty,” although other authorities, including case law from Arizona courts, have helped to define those terms.

They noted that elected officials “may not be disciplined as county employees for violating policies.” County employees, on the other hand, are subject to disciplinary actions, including termination. 

“Discipline aside, however, no one we spoke with expressed the view that elected officials are free to disregard County policies, and we do not believe that to be the case,” investigators said in the report. 

In a statement, the county insisted that the report “confirms” the county supervisors’ grounds for suspending Petersen.

“If the information exonerated Mr. Petersen, the Board of Supervisors would cancel the hearing. That is not the case,” the county said.

The county pointed to findings in the report – that Petersen called adoption agencies and doctor’s offices on taxpayer time; that he stored “sensitive, highly personal ultrasound images and medical records” on his official computer “without encryption or even the most rudimentary safeguards” for privacy; and, that his computer also included documents and wire transfers associated with individuals identified in criminal indictments.

Among other findings, the report said people interviewed generally gave positive impressions of Petersen’s leadership. 

“Although relatively hands-off in style, he understands the work of the office, sets a clear vision and direction for the Office, and delegates day-to-day operations to staff, particularly [Chief Deputy Assessor Tim] Boncoskey,” the report said, summarizing the interviews.

Langhofer said the report bolsters his client’s case.

“No matter how badly the Board of Supervisors wishes to overturn the decision of Maricopa County voters, facts are stubborn things and today’s report confirms what we have been saying for weeks: Paul Petersen is the duly elected Assessor – and by all accounts, he has performed his duties well,” Langhofer said in a statement. “Given the conclusions of the attorney paid by the county, we’re even more confident that a neutral tribunal would rule in our favor.” 

Petersen stands accused in three states of running an illegal adoption scheme involving Marshallese women. He is free on bail after being booked into federal custody in Arkansas. His suspension appeal hearing is set for December 11. 

Woods earlier said he wasn’t sure if less than a month’s time to investigate the matter was sufficient to conduct a “thorough” inquiry. 

The investigators sought to interview Petersen, but said the latter put roadblocks to effectively rebuff their request. 

“The board will need to decide whether sustained misuse of county resources while at the Office of the County Assessor and failing to cooperate with a county-authorized investigation means that Mr. Petersen neglected his duties as a county official,” their report said. 

The investigators made attempts to interview Petersen on Nov. 19 and did not receive any response from him or his legal counsel by Nov. 25. 

They also asked Petersen for a written statement and to return his county computer. The next day Petersen’s attorneys responded that he will have the laptop ready soon, the report said. 

The report said Petersen would only agree to an interview with the caveat that Maricopa County release records about how much time other county elected officials spend in their offices. 

“By placing these wide-ranging conditions on Mr. Petersen’s interview, he effectively refused our request. He also never submitted any information to us in writing. As a result, Mr. Petersen has provided no explanation as to why he maintained hundreds of documents relating to his private law practice and adoption business on the county network,” the report said. 

Ducey says fix needed to address rare situations like Petersen’s

Doug Ducey (Photo by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times)
Doug Ducey (Photo by Katie Campbell/Arizona Capitol Times)

Arizona needs some sort of law or procedure to oust elected county officials as necessary, Gov. Doug Ducey said Tuesday.

But the governor does not favor turning some of these offices into appointed positions.

Ducey repeated his call on Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen to resign following his arrest stemming from his operation of an international adoption business.

He faces charges in Arizona of defrauding the state by having pregnant women who were willing to give up their babies flown from the Marshall Islands to Arizona and then enrolling them in the state’s Medicaid program. There are similar charges pending in Arkansas and Utah as well as federal charges of human smuggling.

Petersen remains in federal custody, meaning he has not been to his county office since the indictments were announced earlier this month.

There is a state law which allows county supervisors to suspend the assessor – and the treasurer – for “defalcation or neglect of duty.” The former refers to misappropriation of funds which is not an issue; the latter could be a factor if Petersen does not show up at work.

Even that law, however, has limits, the most notable being that any suspension can last only 120 days unless there is a move to remove that person based on a criminal conviction.

“I have called on Paul Petersen to resign,” Ducey said Tuesday. “The people’s business, of course, needs to be done.”

There are remedies in law when the person at the center of a probe is a state official. That includes the ability of the Legislature to impeach the governor or any other statewide elected official and all Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and superior court judges.

And lawmakers themselves are subject to expulsion by their colleagues. There is, however, no similar remedy for county elected officials.

Paul Petersen
Paul Petersen

“What happened to Paul Petersen is a real anomaly in terms of municipal government,” Ducey said. “There likely should be a remedy in the law to fix a situation like this.”

The governor had no specific idea of how best to do that.

“I think there’s a couple of different ways to solve it,” he said.

“It’s probably best done with some coordination between state, municipal and city people talking about what a remedy would be in this type of once-in-a-generation type situation,” Ducey continued. “But it is a situation we have to address.”

The governor did not specify what kind of actions he believed should trigger removal. And press aide Patrick Ptak refused to answer any questions to clarify Ducey’s views.

None of this would be necessary if county “row officers” like the attorney, sheriff, assessor and others were selected the same as they are in cities: by the elected members of the city council. That empowers council members to remove those officers for neglect or abandonment of their jobs.

Ducey said that’s an interesting question.

“I have an opinion on all of this and how we could restructure and make it more effective or more efficient,” he said. But he wouldn’t provide any hints to his thoughts.

“That’s not my role as governor,” Ducey said. “It’s to be the chief executive of the state government.”

Still, Ducey made it clear he was not willing to lead any sort of charge to change the selection process.

“I’m not looking to take the vote away from the people,” he said.

“That’s how the framers of the Arizona Constitution set it up in 1912,” the governor explained. “And it’s my job to then execute the laws in that framework.

And Ducey said anyone who wants to alter that is “more than welcome to go to the ballot.”

There already is one legal option: recall.

That’s what happened in 1994 when Pima County voters ousted Alan Lang in the middle of his four-year term amid various allegations, including complaints of sexual harassment and a sharp increase in home valuations.

In the case of Petersen, however, recall appears not to be a realistic option. Given the time it would take to gather and verify the signatures, a recall election likely could not take place before the already scheduled August primary where the Republican assessor could be beaten by a challenger.

Ethics committee might investigate Navarrete

State Sen. Tony Navarrete, who has yet to resign several days after he was charged with multiple felony child sex crimes, now faces a potential Senate ethics investigation and additional allegations of sexual harassment. 

On Monday, Sen. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, asked the Senate ethics committee to investigate the charges against Navarrete, as well as his past support of legislation to teach age-appropriate sex education to younger children. He was charged Friday with seven different felony counts of child sex crimes, allegedly committed over the course of several years with two teenage boys.  

Senate President Karen Fann and Democratic leader Rebecca Rios also issued a joint statement again calling on Navarrete to resign his state Senate seat.  

“The circumstances and serious nature of the felony charges faced by Senator Navarrete provide an untenable distraction from his role as an elected official and public servant for District 30,” they said. “The Senator also now faces a Senate ethics complaint, and no one benefits from any further delay in his ultimate resignation.” 

Townsend said that as a mother, she’s not willing to wait for Navarrete to resign. The probable cause statement released by police includes the summary of a taped call one of the boys had with Navarrete in which he admitted and apologized for the abuse, and Townsend said that’s more than enough proof to remove him from the Legislature.  

“I don’t think someone with these types of accusations and taped confession deserves a single day longer in the Arizona Legislature, and I hope that we move swiftly to get this taken care of,” she said during a news conference. 

Under Senate rules, ethics committee chair Sen. Sine Kerr, R-Buckeye, will receive the complaint and decide within the next few days whether to move forward with an investigation. The ethics committee can meet and conduct an investigation while the Legislature is out of session, but any action, such as expulsion, would have to wait until the Legislature is back in session.  

“Senator Navarrete is facing serious felony charges,” Kerr said in a statement. “He should resign from the Senate. In the meantime, the Senate Ethics Committee will follow its process.” 

An ethics committee investigation would be made difficult because of the ongoing criminal investigation, said Sen. T.J. Shope, a Coolidge Republican who chaired the House ethics committee when it investigated former Rep. David Stringer over Stringer’s past alleged sex crimes against minors. The Stringer investigation revolved around a closed case from decades earlier.  

“Anything the Senate does right now could conflict with a criminal investigation,” Shope said. “That makes it quite a bit different, really.” 

Townsend said she doesn’t expect Gov. Doug Ducey to call the Legislature back into special session immediately to vote to expel Navarrete, but she hopes he does if the ethics committee recommends it.  

Her complaint includes a request to investigate whether there have been any other allegations, including sexual harassment of a co-worker or subordinate, and what was done to rectify the situation.  

Over the weekend, political organizer and former progressive state House candidate Gilbert Romero shared publicly that he had been sexually harassed several times by Navarrete, describing “behaviors that made me feel extremely unsafe, uncomfortable, objectified and embarrassed in public in front of others.” 

In his statement and in a subsequent interview with the Arizona Capitol Times, Romero said he wasn’t ready to share the details of his interactions with Navarrete, but that he and other friends were harassed. When he tried to talk to others about the harassment, he said, they downplayed it.  

Romero said he didn’t push the issue at the time, but he felt he had to speak up this weekend after learning that Navarrete didn’t prey only on adult men. 

“I wasn’t on a crusade to ruin careers,” he said. “I wasn’t on a crusade to ruin anything.” 

Navarrete was openly gay and a member of the Legislature’s LGBTQ caucus. National conservative media and state Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, have repeatedly claimed that Navarrete’s sexuality is somehow connected to his alleged crimes, and Romero said he also felt the need to speak up as a gay man.  

“As a proud gay man myself, I am no stranger to unfair, ungrounded and just false assumptions of being a pedophile,” he said. “As a gay man, I wanted to show others that his victims weren’t just allegedly children. They were other men too.” 

Another portion of Townsend’s complaint questions whether Navarrete “used state resources to advance the effort to expose minors under the age of 12 to sexual content, to include such content in the public school system.”  

Conservative parents, lawmakers and activists have spent the past several years attacking Democratic politicians over sex education, especially after a bipartisan group in 2019 succeeded in repealing a 1991 law that prohibited teaching about homosexuality while educating students on AIDS and HIV. The AIDS and HIV instruction was a federal mandate, but Republicans at the time wanted to avoid doing anything to promote a “homosexual lifestyle.”  

Since the 2019 repeal, Republican lawmakers have introduced a series of restrictive sex education bills. Navarrete has spoken passionately against many of them, while simultaneously supporting Democratic sex ed bills, including one he sponsored this year to mandate “medically accurate” and “age-appropriate” sex education for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. 

Proponents of those bills say they’re intended to help younger children learn about concepts such as “safe touch,” helping them set boundaries and recognize whether they’re being abused. Opponents of the legislation view it as sexualizing young children, and Townsend cited those parents in explaining that part of the complaint.  

“They’re concerned about this effort on his part to put sexuality and those types of things in the early grades of school,” she said. Those who are concerned with the motivations of those people pushing this at such a young age of innocence, it has just deepened their concern and they want to make that statement that sexual exploitation of a child is not tolerated.”  

While pressure mounts for Navarrete to resign, there may be legal tactics at play in Navarrete’s delay the resignation or refuse, according to attorney Kory Langhofer.   

Langhofer, a prominent GOP attorney, represented former Maricopa County assessor Paul Petersen when he appealed his 2019 suspension from his elected post over criminal child trafficking charges.  

More often than not, public officials who are accused of a crime don’t resign immediately, he said.  

“When a public official is accused of a crime, they expect they’ll have a chance of successfully defending themselves,” he said. “And so, they don’t want to give up their office before their guilt is determined, and they’re also worried that resigning is generally perceived as an implicit admission of wrongdoing.”  

Some public officials wait until there’s a conviction, while others wait at least a few months. Petersen resigned in January 2020, three months after he was charged but before his conviction later that year. Former lawmaker Ben Arredondo, a Democrat convicted of fraud in 2012, resigned his seat as part of a plea agreement.  

-Staff writer Kyra Haas contributed reporting 

Editor’s note: A previous headline for this story erroneously reported the ethics committee would investigate Tony Navarrete, when actually, the decision to investigate has not been made. 

Ex-politician’s accomplice gets 2 years in adoption scheme

Judges Gavel, Handcuffs And Old Book On The Black Table
A woman who acknowledged helping a former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen in an illegal adoption scheme involving women from the Marshall Islands was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday.

Lynwood Jennet, 47, took part in submitting false applications for the birth mothers to receive state-funded health coverage, even though none of the women resided in the state. She had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and theft charges for her role at Petersen’s direction, a Republican who served as Maricopa County assessor for six years.

Lynwood Jennet
Lynwood Jennet

Petersen worked as an adoption attorney before resigning his elected post and pleading guilty in three states to crimes related to the scheme. The health care fraud committed by Petersen and Jennet totaled $814,000, authorities said.

Petersen is in prison serving a total of 11 years for a conviction in Arkansas for conspiring to commit human smuggling and a health care fraud conviction in Arizona.

Additionally, Petersen was sentenced to one to 15 years in prison in Utah for a human smuggling conviction. The Utah sentence, which leaves it up to the state’s parole board to decide how long a person actually serves, is to be served concurrently, meaning Petersen could be done with his Utah sentence by the time he completes his other sentences, or have up to four more years.

Authorities say Petersen illegally paid women from the Marshall Islands to come to the United States to give up their babies in at least 70 adoption cases over three years. Citizens of the Marshall Islands have been prohibited from traveling to the U.S. for adoption purposes since 2003.

Jennet was accused of serving as a point of contact for people in the Marshall Islands who looked for pregnant women interested in coming to the United States to give up their children for adoption. Investigators have said Jennet relayed information about birth mothers to Petersen, who bought the women passports and plane tickets to Phoenix.

Her attorney said Jennet, a native of the Marshall Islands, cooperated with investigators.

Former AG Woods to lead probe of suspended assessor Peterson

(Deposit Photos/Tasha Tuvango)
(Deposit Photos/Tasha Tuvango)

Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel has hired the attorney who botched an investigation into the Fiesta Bowl a decade ago to oversee a probe of County Assessor Paul Petersen.

Adel’s office announced that former Attorney General Grant Woods will oversee the work of two private law firms hired to investigate whether Petersen neglected his duties.

Petersen stands accused in three states of running an illegal adoption scheme involving Marshallese women, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors suspended him Oct. 28 for 120 days for neglecting his duties. He was in federal custody in Arkansas at the time, but he is free on bail.  

Woods, in 2009, conducted a week-long investigation into a campaign-finance scandal involving Fiesta Bowl employees and found no credible evidence of wrongdoing. But when state and federal investigators got involved, several employees of the college-football organization ended up pleading guilty to various misdemeanors and felonies, including former Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker, who spent eight months in prison.  

Grant Woods
Grant Woods

Woods has said in a subsequent interview in 2017 with Tempe-based journalist Nancy Puffer that the Fiesta Bowl manipulated him.

“At the end of the day I had lots of excuses, but I was hired to see if there was a problem, and I didn’t see it,” Woods said.

Petersen’s criminal defense attorney, Kurt Altman, questioned whether it is necessary to have Woods oversee the neglect-of-duties investigation because one of the firms tasked to investigate the county assessor, Stein Mitchell Carey Chapman, is a seasoned and respected outfit that specializes in criminal defense.

Woods will be providing regular updates to Adel.

“Sounds like a good gig if you can get it,” Altman said.

Additionally, Cosmich Simmons & Brown, a litigation firm, will look into all of Petersen’s documents found on his county computer in an internal audit. The audit found that only five percent of those documents pertained to official county business. 

Kory Langhofer, Petersen’s attorney who is defending him in the suspension matter, said Woods has already judged Petersen.

Langhofer provided Arizona Capitol Times a tweet from Oct. 9 in which Woods congratulated Attorney General Mark Brnovich for indicting Petersen and “liked” a tweet stating Petersen should learn to enjoy prison.

“Great Work General,” Woods tweeted.

Langhofer said Woods’ social media activity reveals a bias against Petersen and makes him the least qualified investigator.

He said the verdict is already in on Petersen’s suspension. 

“The Board of Supervisors’ premade conclusions—which they’ve already announced and voted to approve—will be dressed up and reprinted on Grant Woods’s letterhead,” Langhofer said. 

The Board of Supervisors voted last week to have a suspension appeal hearing on December 11.

Woods laughed at hearing Langhofer’s comments and denied having any bias against Petersen. He also denied that the Board of Supervisors have already predetermined the investigation outcome as Langhofer suggests.

“The Board suspended him and they need to review the suspension and what steps to take going forward. They need to know more about the Assessor’s Office and the job he’s done. It’s completely separate [from the criminal charges],” Woods said.

Jennifer Liewer, an Adel spokeswoman, said Woods’ overall reputation and experience is why Adel considered him and why she thinks he is qualified.

“[Woods] is a well-respected member of the community,” Jennifer Liewer, a county spokeswoman, said. “He has conducted hundreds of investigations as attorney general and overseen many … we believe the team we compiled will do a thorough job and will be able to provide Adel and the Board of Supervisors with a thorough investigation.”

Both Adel and Woods also have a history with Sen. John McCain.  Adel interned for McCain while in college and Woods was McCain’s Chief of Staff when he was a congressman. Liewer said that history was not considered when choosing the former AG to oversee the investigation.

Woods said he was approached last week to begin overseeing the investigation, but still has not seen a contract yet for how much he will be paid for the work, which is expected to take less than one month.

He said the short timeframe will be challenging, but that the majority of the work will be conducted by Lee Stein of Stein Mitchell Carey Chapman.

Woods was vague on whether there is enough time before the Dec. 11 hearing to conduct a thorough investigation.

“It depends on your definition of thorough,” he said. “We’re going to do what we’re going to do and give [the Board of Supervisors] what we have and that’s up to them.”

Prosecutors say Petersen paid the Marshallese women up to $10,000 to come to the United States, where they were crammed into houses to wait to give birth and provide their babies for adoption.

Petersen faces charges in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas that include human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Petersen has now pleaded not guilty in courts in Arkansas, Arizona and Utah. And next month, he is scheduled for his next court dates in Arkansas on Dec. 5 and Arizona Dec. 19.

Editor’s note: This story has been revised to include direct quotes and paraphrased statements from Grant Woods. 

Glassman down in Maricopa County Assessor race

Rodney Glassman
Rodney Glassman

Perennial candidate Rodney Glassman is likely to extend his election losing streak, this time to Eddie Cook, the appointed Maricopa County Assessor. Glassman has 47% of the vote with Cook holding 53%.

Glassman previously applied for the appointment to the county assessor position after Paul Petersen, the embattled lawyer, resigned following an illegal adoption scheme involving the Marshall Islands. Petersen has since pleaded guilty to several felonies and faces prison time.

Glassman lost out to Cook, a former Gilbert Town Councilman, for the appointment in February. Before that Glassman wanted the appointment for the County Attorney job that went to Republican Allister Adel and before that he lost in his bid for the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2018. 

Glassman’s interest in a political office has become sort of a running joke at the Capitol of what he will run for next.

Kirk Adams, Gov. Doug Ducey’s former chief of staff, took a shot at Glassman on 12 News about all the seats he seeks.

“I think Rodney Glassman will make a great corporation commissioner. I mean county assessor. I mean county attorney. I mean U.S. senator,” he said. 

Despite his loss, Glassman raised and spent an unusual amount of money for a seat that typically does not gain much attention in a given election year. But Petersen put the race on the radar of voters. 

Days before the election, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman penned an op-ed in the Arizona Republic criticizing Glassman for not knowing basic functions of the Assessor’s Office. 

“[Glassman] shows not only a basic misunderstanding of the job for which he is running, but also the role of the board of supervisors,” Hickman wrote. He concluded the piece saying Glassman’s “lack of knowledge” shows he and fellow supervisors were right to appoint Adel and Cook to their respective positions over Glassman.

If Cook holds his lead, he will face Democrat Aaron Connor in a county that’s increasingly turning more blue with each election

GOP lawmaker looking for way to remove indicted elected officials

handcuffs-620

A three-term state lawmaker is writing legislation to allow county supervisors to oust a sitting assessor or treasurer if that person is indicted.

The proposal by Rep. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, would require a two-thirds vote of the board to fire either official. That amounts to four supervisors in counties with five-member boards and two out of three in other counties.

But the measure could run into trouble with some of his colleagues as it would be a simple indictment – and no requirement of a conviction – to invoke the removal process.

“I believe in innocent until proven guilty,” said Sen. David Farnsworth, R-Mesa, who chairs the Senate Government Committee.

Anthony Kern
Anthony Kern

Kern’s measure comes as Maricopa County supervisors have been told by their attorneys that they have no right to dismiss county Assessor Paul Petersen despite his indictment on various state and federal laws dealing with his international adoption service and the fact that he has been unable to come to the office because he is sitting in a federal detention facility.

Absent a conviction on charges of willful or corrupt misconduct, about all they can do is suspend him for up to 120 days, an action they have vowed to take this coming week. But Kern said that’s insufficient, leaving an official on the public payroll.

“I think it’s kind of preposterous that (with) an elected official there’s no way to remove them,” he said.

Farnsworth, however, questioned the whole concept of removing someone who has been elected by the public based solely on an indictment which is nothing more than a formal charge or accusation, generally of a serious crime.

That’s also the concern of Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, who chairs the House Government Committee, who pointed out the nature of grand jury proceedings that result in indictments.

“I’m a bit uneasy about throwing somebody out of an office based upon a judicial proceeding in which the accused or his lawyer conceivably had no ability to defend themselves,” he said, noting that all the evidence at that stage comes from prosecutors.

David Farnsworth
David Farnsworth

And even Kern acknowledged that using indictment as a trigger for a vote of the supervisors may be a bit much.

“An indictment might be a little too lax as far as removal from office,” he told Capitol Media Services. “I might want to tighten that up and make it an actual conviction.”

Kern said he’s also moving carefully given the nature of what he is proposing.

“I want to be very careful because the voters did elect these officials,” he said.

There are other questions to be answered.

One is the question of the nature of the crime being charged.

In Petersen’s case, the state is charging fraud, saying that he enrolled pregnant women he brought here from the Marshall Islands in the state’s Medicaid program. The federal charges relate to human trafficking.

But there are more minor offenses that are criminal, including drunk driving and driving at more than 20 miles over the posted speed limit. Kern said though that, as far as he’s concerned, any indictment on any crime should be enough to allow for removal.

“If you’re an elected official … you should be leading by example,” he said.

And Kern said the safeguard is that two-thirds vote: It leaves it up to the supervisors to decide whether the crime charged is sufficient to remove the assessor or treasurer.

Kavanagh said there may be a middle ground, something that allows removal of a county official but requiring something more than a simple indictment.

He said it could be tied to the existing law allowing the supervisors to suspend an assessor or treasurer for 120 days.

John Kavanagh
John Kavanagh

That, said Kavanagh, would allow for some time for preliminary court hearings, providing more information about the crimes charged than the simple indictment. More to the point, he said it would give the accused official a chance to present more of his or her side of the case.

Only after that 120 days are up, Kavanagh said, could there be a vote on removal, even without a conviction.

Richard Elias who chairs the Pima County Board of Supervisors said he recognizes the current gap in state law about what happens when an elected county official is indicted.

“There needs to be some kind of remedy to this situation, especially when it involves crimes against children or violent crimes,” he said. “But we need to be very careful because, obviously, in this country, you’re innocent until proven guilty.”

Still, Elias said, “there has to be some remedy for taxpayers so that the work gets done.”

But Pima County Assessor Bill Staples questioned whether such a removal process is necessary.

At the very least, he said, a properly running office would be staffed with competent assistants who could carry on the daily work even with the elected official absent. And Staples said that, as far as he can tell, that applies to the people working under Petersen.

“So I think the office is in very good hands,” Staples said.

And even if there is reason to oust a sitting assessor, Staples questions what procedures would be appropriate.

“I’m not sure that the jury, so to speak, or the executioner should be the board of supervisors,” Staples said. And Staples has had some disputes with the board, including having his agency’s budget cut, saying some of the decisions “I’ll call questionable.”

Kern said he may expand the scope of the legislation to apply not just to removal of the assessor and treasurer but also to other elected county officials including the sheriff, county attorney and clerk of the court.

Indicted assessor Paul Petersen gets chance to challenge suspension

Paul Petersen
Paul Petersen

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously today to give indicted County Assessor Paul Petersen a chance to challenge his suspension and opened the door for the county attorney to investigate him.

Petersen’s attorney, Kory Langhofer, asked for the hearing and reconsideration of Petersen’s 120-day suspension in a scathing letter on Nov. 7.

Langhofer said in the letter Petersen is the “only lawful occupant of that constitutionally prescribed office,” and he compared the board’s handling of the suspension to a “Soviet show trial.”

Petersen stands accused in three states of running a human smuggling scheme that brought pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to the U.S.

The board deliberated roughly three hours in executive session before voting to hold the hearing, scheduled for Dec. 11. The board, as allowed under statute, also voted to ask County Attorney Allister Adel to investigate Petersen.

Adel, if she grants the request, must provide Petersen with notice and a report on her findings, including a statement of charges.

Langhofer, who was not at the Board of Supervisors meeting, said he thinks the investigation is clearly an attempt at trying to remove Petersen from office.

“They are trying to whitewash the decision they have already made,” he said.

But, Langhofer said, they welcome an investigation as long as it sticks to the facts and focuses on whether Petersen neglected his office as the board alleged when it suspended Petersen Oct. 28.

“[I] strongly suspect the county has instructed Allister Adel to conclude regardless of what investigation shows — that he neglected his duties. That’s not the way this is supposed to work and that’s why we will go to court once this is done,” Langhofer said.

Prosecutors say Petersen paid the women up to $10,000 to come to the United States, where they were crammed into houses to wait to give birth and provide their babies for adoption.

Petersen faces charges in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas that include human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Petersen has now pleaded not guilty in courts in Arkansas and Arizona and is expected to enter a plea on Friday in Utah. And next month, he is scheduled for his next court dates in Arkansas on Dec. 5 and Arizona Dec. 19.

The Associated Press contributed to this story. 

Indicted County Assessor Petersen’s co-defendant to testify against him

This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor's Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor's Office via AP)
This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen.  (Maricopa County Assessor’s Office via AP)

Indicted Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen’s co-defendant in an alleged illegal adoption scheme has agreed to testify against him. 

Lynwood Jennet, 46, of Mesa, pled guilty in Maricopa County Superior Court Thursday to various charges and she will go to prison for two to four years and could pay nearly $1 million in restitution in exchange for the state dropping 45 other charges. 

She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraudulent schemes and artifices, two counts of theft and a failure to file a tax return. Jennet also has two pending cases against her by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

Petersen is accused of paying women from the Marshall Islands to deliver their babies in the U.S. and of organizing the adoptions to American families. He is charged with smuggling and adoption fraud in Arkansas and Utah, and with defrauding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System in Arizona.

In a prepared statement, Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Jennet’s plea was a step for her toward resolving those cases.

“Today’s development is a significant step towards justice in this case,” Brnovich said. “We will continue to pursue any individual who rips off Arizona taxpayers.”

Jennet is a Marshallese woman who worked for Petersen for six years. Prosecutors allege she was the intermediary between Petersen and the women and helped them fraudulently apply for Medicaid benefits.

As part of Jennet’s plea agreement, she will give more information on Petersen’s transportation, fraudulent AHCCCS applications and the status of any birthmother she and Petersen allegedly brought to the U.S. between November 30, 2015, and May 30, 2019, and other related crimes.

Jennet’s sentencing hearing has not been set and, pending court approval, she will be on house arrest and could be electronically monitored until March 20, 2020. After that, she will be taken back into custody until that hearing.

Investigators were on to Jennet in April when a hospital social worker informed them she was the interpreter, emergency contact and notary for three consecutive Marshallese women who had given birth over a three-week period at Banner Baywood Hospital in Mesa, according to a search warrant affidavit. 

Investigators stuck a GPS tracker on her car to build a case against her and Petersen, according to a search warrant affidavit. 

Jennet, who along with the birth mothers, received Medicaid, reported on her application she had no bank account, but investigators found an account that had received $116,540, with $64,650 coming from Petersen’s law office. 

In September, she was indicted by a state grand jury in 17 counts of conspiracy, fraudulent schemes, theft, forgery, perjury, money laundering and failure to file a tax return. Some of those charges also involved fraudulent Medicaid filings.

She was arrested and released after posting a $25,000 bond but was arrested again in early October, a week after Petersen was. The two were indicted in October.

Part of what led to her arrest was an approved search warrant that allowed police to track her car all day every day, as they suspected it was used in her alleged crimes. She was listed as the emergency contact for a Marshallese woman who gave birth.

Petersen was placed under a 120-day suspension from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which is in limbo. On Thursday, the board said it would not have the public hearing it was scheduled to have Thursday because it didn’t have the final investigative report.

The reason for the delay, Fields Mosley, a county spokesman, said, was because the team behind the report did not get Petersen’s laptop or at least a mirror image of the laptop from Brnovich’s office until December 10, which was delayed because the AG had to serve a search warrant to get the laptop, and that the information in it hasn’t been completely finalized.

Petersen’s attorney Kurt Altman could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

Lawyer says assessor Petersen miscast as human smuggler

Paul Petersen
Paul Petersen

A lawyer for an Arizona elected official charged in three states in an international adoption scheme said Tuesday prosecutors have miscast his client as a human smuggler.

Attorney Matt Long said Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen cares deeply for the mothers from the Marshall Islands whom he connected with adoptive parents in the United States.

Prosecutors say Petersen paid the women up to $10,000 to come to the United States, where they were crammed into houses to wait to give birth and provide their babies for adoption.

Petersen faces charges in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas that include human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

“This was not human trafficking,” Long said. “That’s going to be borne out by evidence. That’s going to be borne out by the manner in which it will be demonstrated that Mr. Petersen dealt with the birth mothers and the adopted families.”

A judge in Phoenix delayed Petersen’s arraignment until after an Oct. 29 hearing in Arkansas, where he faces federal charges.

A judge in Utah on Tuesday declined to reduce his $3 million bail. The amount was based in part on $2.7 million that authorities say was deposited into an account for adoption fees over several years. Petersen’s Utah attorney, Scott Williams, said much of that money has been spent.

Petersen is currently in federal custody.

There are nearly 30 pending adoptions in Arkansas, Arizona and Utah that were being handled by Petersen’s company, according to court documents.

The women in Utah were “frightened and nervous” after Petersen was arrested, according to an affidavit filed by a special agent with the Utah attorney general’s office. They didn’t have money, cellphones or transportation, prosecutors said.

The agent also said Peterson and his associates would take passports from the Marshallese women while they were in the U.S., which gave him more control over them.

Petersen has been unfairly ping-ponged between state and federal custody and has been largely denied access to his lawyer, Long said. That has made it hard for Petersen to defend himself and for lawyers, mothers and adoptive families to understand the ramifications for pending adoptions, he said.

“I can’t get access to him, other people can’t get access to him for a sufficient amount of time in order to work through some of these issues,” Long said.

Petersen, he said, helped his clients navigate the complicated emotions involved with adoption.

“That’s been consistent in Mr. Petersen’s life — a care and concern for the Marshallese community,” Long said.

Long said Petersen has no plans to resign from his elected position determining the value of properties for tax purposes.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and virtually all of Maricopa County’s elected officials have said Petersen, a Republican, should quit because the charges make it difficult for him to serve.

Petersen and Long completed missions in the Marshall Islands with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and they later worked in the islands on behalf of an international adoption agency. They continued working with the agency while both were in law school in Arizona.

Long said he’s looking for another lawyer to represent Petersen because of their friendship and Long’s own deep ties to the Marshallese community, noting he adopted a Marshallese child 20 years ago.

Maricopa supervisors appoint replacement county assessor

Eddie Cook
Eddie Cook

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Friday to appoint Gilbert Town Councilman Eddie Cook as county assessor to replace Paul Petersen, his indicted predecessor.
Cook is a Republican who was one of 11 applicants for appointment as assessor, a countywide officer responsible for setting property tax valuations.
Cook’s appointment runs through Dec. 31 but he said he plans to run in this year’s 2020 primary and general elections for a four-year term.
Petersen resigned in January under pressure after being indicted last October on fraud charges involving an adoption operation involving pregnant women from the Marshall Islands.
Petersen has pleaded not guilty. He worked as an adoption attorney while serving as county assessor.
County officials say Cook will be sworn in as assessor after the Gilbert Town Council accepts his resignation.
Cook said Friday he will resign at his final council meeting on February 18.
Cook has served on the Gilbert Town Council since 2011 while also working for a technology company.
The county supervisors suspended Petersen for 120 days in late October, and a temporary replacement ran the office during that period.

Paul Petersen gets 6 years in adoption scheme

In this Nov. 5, 2019 file photo, former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen, right, with his attorney, Kurt Altman, leave after a court hearing in Phoenix. Petersen, 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 on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. It was the first of three punishments he’ll face for arranging adoptions prohibited by an international compact. (AP Photo/Jacques Billeaud, File)
In this Nov. 5, 2019 file photo, former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen, right, with his attorney, Kurt Altman, leave after a court hearing in Phoenix. Petersen, 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 on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. It was the first of three punishments he’ll face for arranging adoptions prohibited by an international compact. (AP Photo/Jacques Billeaud, File)

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 Maricopa County Assessor for six years and also worked as an adoption attorney, illegally paid women from the Pacific island nation to come to the U.S. to give up their babies in at least 70 adoptions cases in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas, prosecutors said.

Marshall Islands citizens have been prohibited from traveling to the U.S. for adoption purposes since 2003 and prosecutors said Petersen’s scheme lasted three years.

Judge Timothy Brooks, who imposed the sentence from Fayetteville, Arkansas, said Petersen abused his position as an attorney by misleading or instructing others to lie to courts in adoptions that wouldn’t have been approved had the truth been told to them.

The judge said Petersen turned what should be joyous adoption occasions into “a baby-selling enterprise.” He also described Petersen’s adoption practice as a “criminal livelihood” and said he ripped off taxpayers at the same time he was elected to serve them.

Brooks rejected Petersen’s claims that he initially thought he was acting within the bounds of the law, but later realized what he was doing was illegal.

“You knew that lying and making these false statements to immigration officials and state courts was wrong,” said Brooks, who gave Petersen two years longer in prison than sentencing guidelines recommended.

Appearing by videoconference, Petersen told the judge that his actions in the Arkansas case weren’t indicative of who he is as a person and offered an apology to any birth mothers who felt disrespected by his treatment of them.

Petersen said he was horrified to learn that subordinates he did not name during the hearing had mistreated birth mothers, though he claimed he didn’t know about it at the time and did not condone it.

“I take responsibility for my lack of oversight,” said Petersen said.

Petersen, who earlier pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit human smuggling in Arkansas, faces sentencing next month for convictions in Utah and Arizona.

Federal prosecutors have said the former assessor — responsible for determining property values in the county that encompasses Phoenix — defrauded state courts, violated an international adoption compact and took advantage of mothers and adoptive families for his own profit. The money Petersen made from the adoption scheme helped pay for his lavish lifestyle, including expensive trips, luxury cars and multiple residences, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said the passports of some birth mothers were taken away to prevent them from leaving the United States and that they were threatened with arrest if they tried to back out of adoptions. Petersen’s attorneys vigorously disputed that their client played any role in keeping some of the mothers’ passports, much less condoned it.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 22 in Phoenix for submitting false applications to Arizona’s Medicaid system so the mothers could receive state-funded health coverage — even though he knew they didn’t live in the state — and for providing documents to a county juvenile court that contained false information. Petersen has said he has since paid back $670,000 in health care costs to the state of more than $800,000 that prosecutors cited in his indictment.

His sentencing in Utah on human smuggling and other convictions is set for Jan. 20.

Earlier in his life, Petersen, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christs of Latter-day Saints, had completed a proselytizing mission in the Marshall Islands, a collection of atolls and islands in the eastern Pacific, where he became fluent in the Marshallese language.

He quit as Maricopa County’s assessor in January amid pressure from other county officials to resign.

Petersen has said he carried out hundreds of legal adoptions after he discovered a niche locating homes for vulnerable children from the Marshall Islands and helping needy mothers who wanted a more stable family life for their children.

Petersen in a letter to the Arkansas judge several ago said he is now ashamed, as a fiscal conservative, for imposing the pregnancy labor and delivery costs on Arizona taxpayers.

Some families whose adoptions were handled by Petersen wrote letters to the judge in support of the former assessor.

Paul Petersen pleads guilty, faces jail time

This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor's Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor's Office via AP)
Paul Petersen (Maricopa County Assessor’s Office via AP)

 

Former Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen, who was accused of paying women from the Marshall Islands to deliver their babies in the U.S. and of organizing the children’s adoption to American families, today pleaded guilty to four fraudulent charges.

He will face time in prison and has to pay fines of up to $650,000.

Petersen faced 32 felony charges in Arizona. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich will drop the remaining charges per a plea agreement. The charges that Petersen pleaded guilty to entail between 3 and 12.5 years of imprisonment.

Petersen pleaded guilty to fraudulent schemes and artifices, a Class 2 felony, and fraudulent schemes and practices, a Class 5 felony. These are nondangerous, non-repetitive offenses under the state criminal code.

The $650,000 in fines will go to Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System in Arizona, the state’s Medicaid program. Petersen must also pay $11,000 to one of the victims and $18,000 to the Attorney General’s Office for extraordinary investigative costs.

“Any money obtained as a result of a forfeiture order in Maricopa County Superior Court shall be applied as a credit against the restitution order in this case,” the judge ruled.

Petersen’s official sentence will be set within 90 days, which falls on Sept. 16, 2020.

Authorities accused Petersen of smuggling and adoption fraud in Arkansas and Utah, and with defrauding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System in Arizona.

Petersen charged upwards of $35,000 for his adoption services, and paid the mothers, through a third party, around $10,000 per baby, though he would often skim expenses out of the final payments, according to court documents.

Brnovich ordered to freeze Petersen’s assets in November, which included Petersen’s Mesa property where the pregnant Marshallese women lived, and Petersen’s law office.

The warrant to seize his assets revealed that a prostitution camp in the Marshall Islands provided many of the birth mothers caught up in the illegal adoption scheme, according to statements attributed to his co-defendant.

Petersen resigned from his elected position in January after the County Board of Supervisors suspended him for three months.

Petersen still has a case pending in Utah and in a federal court in Arkansas, his attorney Kurt Altman said.

“It’s anticipated and scheduled frankly that Mr. Petersen is also going to enter pleas of guilty in those two cases,” Altman told the judge.

Petersen pleads not guilty anew, hires prominent lawyer

This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor's Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor's Office via AP)
This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor’s Office via AP)

Paul Petersen, the recently suspended Maricopa County Assessor, today pleaded not guilty for the second time in two weeks on allegations that he ran a child smuggling ring. 

He also hired a prominent political lawyer to argue that his suspension is unconstitutional.  

Petersen showed up to court in Maricopa County exactly one week after his first arraignment in federal court in Arkansas.

Authorities accused Petersen of paying women from the Marshall Islands to deliver their babies in the U.S. and of organizing the children’s adoption to American families. He is charged with smuggling and adoption fraud in Arkansas and Utah, and with defrauding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System in Arizona. 

His lead attorney, Kurt Altman, said they are preparing for the next court date in Arkansas on December 5 and Arizona on December 19, though he added those dates could change. 

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on October 28 to suspend Petersen for 120 days, the full suspension period allowed in statute. He will not be paid four months of his $77,000 salary during his suspension. The board subsequently appointed Bill Wiley, the county’s former director of flood control and air quality, as acting administrator of the Assessor’s Office. Wiley will earn nearly twice as much as Petersen would per hour. 

Altman called the suspension “outside [the board’s] authority” and deferred questions to Petersen’s new lawyers, Kory Langhofer and Tom Basile, who were also present after the hearing. 

Langhofer, a prominent GOP attorney who represented the Arizona Republican Party under Chairman Jonathan Lines, said the board’s decision to suspend Petersen is unconstitutional. 

“Nobody is saying Paul Petersen didn’t do his job as county assessor very well,” Langhofer said, adding the position of assessor is equal to the supervisors, so neither of them should be able to kick out the other from office. 

“Everyone agrees he did the job, he showed up, he did what needed to be done. That’s not the issue at all,” Langhofer said. 

The Arizona Republic reported that Petersen only spent 53 days at his county office during the year, citing parking records, and worked on an average of four hours each day. The county has since revoked Petersen’s access to the garage and his office due to his suspension.

On top of only showing up for 53 days, an internal audit showed several documents on Petersen’s county computer pertaining to his adoption business. Only five percent of the documents found pertained to county business at all. 

Langhofer said he plans to write a letter to the Board of Supervisors to handle things “amicably,” and if things cannot be settled that way, then his client will take the matter to court.

Petersen resigns

This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor's Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor's Office via AP)
This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. 

An elected official in metro Phoenix resigned Tuesday, months after being charged with running a human smuggling operation that paid pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to give up their babies in the U.S.
The resignation of Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen came after leaders in the one of the nation’s most populous counties suspended and pressured him to resign after his arrest nearly three months ago. The county’s governing board voted in late December to start the process of removing Petersen, who also works as an adoption attorney.
He is accused of illegally paying women from the Pacific island nation to come to the United States to give up their babies in at least 70 adoption cases in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas over three years. Citizens of the Marshall Islands have been prohibited from traveling to the U.S. for adoption purposes since 2003.
In a statement released by his attorneys, Petersen proclaimed his innocence and said he never neglected his duties as assessor, responsible for determining the property values in the county. The Republican said county officials and news organizations presumed he was guilty.
“My focus now turns to defending the allegations against me,” Petersen said.
He is charged with human smuggling in Utah and Arkansas and defrauding Arizona’s Medicaid system by $800,000 by submitting false applications for the women to receive state-funded health coverage.
Authorities say the women who went to Utah to give birth received little or no prenatal care. They also said Petersen and his associates took passports from the pregnant women while they were in the U.S. to assert more control over them.
Petersen has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Arizona and Arkansas. He hasn’t yet entered a plea in Utah.
His attorneys have said Petersen ran a legal adoption practice and has been vilified before his side of the story comes out. They had argued that the county governing board had no basis for suspending him.
County Supervisor Steve Gallardo said Petersen has only himself to blame for his actions. “He took advantage of these vulnerable women for his own personal greed, and he did it on county time,” Gallardo said.
Kory Langhofer, one of Petersen’s attorneys, said his client had to choose between focusing his time and money on holding onto his office or preserving his liberty. “It’s an unfair choice, but he has ultimately chosen to focus on the criminal allegations, rather than his job,” Langhofer said.
Petersen previously rejected calls to resign and was fighting his 120-day unpaid suspension.
Thousands of files related to his adoption business were discovered on his government laptop, cementing the board’s push to remove him. Content recovered on the laptop included text messages of pregnant women being threatened when they changed their minds about giving up their newborns.
Petersen, who was paid $77,000 a year in his government job, won a 2014 special election to be assessor and was re-elected in 2016. His term was scheduled to expire at the end of the year.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christs of Latter-day Saints, he completed a proselytizing mission in the Marshall Islands, a collection of atolls and islands in the eastern Pacific.
Lynwood Jennet, who was accused of helping Petersen in the scheme, pleaded guilty last month in Arizona to helping arrange state-funded health coverage for the expectant mothers, even though the women didn’t live in the state. She has agreed to testify against Petersen.

Petersen’s attorney lobs ethics claim at County Attorney as he prepares for hearing on suspension

This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor's Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor's Office via AP)
Suspended Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen (Maricopa County Assessor’s Office via AP)

As suspended County Assessor Paul Petersen fends for his job in a hearing Wednesday, his attorney has leveled conflict-of-interest allegations against Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel similar to what led to the downfall of her predecessor Andy Thomas.

Attorney Kory Langhofer accused Adel in a Nov. 11 letter of acting adversely against Petersen by advising the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors how to remove him from office while she also represents him in a tax-court matter.  

“Direct adversity against a concurrent client is per se unethical,” Langhofer said in the letter.

Petersen, who the Board suspended on Oct. 29 for 120 days, has been granted a hearing Dec. 11 to convince the Board to rescind his suspension.

Petersen was suspended from office for “neglect of duty” for the 20 days he was detained in Arkansas and not able to do his job, and for violating county policy that he shall not use county resources for non-county business. Petersen, though, is not a county employee and therefore does not actually have to follow that rule and also cannot be disciplined for breaking it, according to a report written by private lawyers who were contracted to investigate whether Petersen neglected his duties. The investigators found he had not. 

Petersen stands accused in three states of running a human smuggling scheme that brought pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. for adoption. 

Kory Langhofer
Kory Langhofer

Langhofer compared Adel’s handling of the suspension to Thomas’ attempts to pursue false criminal charges against county supervisors, judges and other political foes, a charge for which he was subsequently disbarred.

In response to the accusation, Jennifer Liewer, a spokeswoman for Adel, said the letter was sent “to create a distraction to the issues at hand” and deferred any other comments to the letter written back to Langhofer. 

Adel’s attorney Lynda Shely responded in a Nov. 26 letter that called Langhofer’s claim “misplaced.” 

Langhofer argued that Adel is being unethical because the county attorney (and the office) have represented Petersen in other matters and is also now working “to remove him from office.” He noted that the entire five-member board called for Petersen to resign long before any investigation had taken place or evidence had been presented, and argued Adel should have recused herself from the case. 

“This issue would not have arisen if your office had recused from either advising the Board in connection with Paul’s suspension or from advising the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office in connection with all matters,” he wrote. “But because it offered legal advice adverse to a concurrent client, there is a substantial question as to whether your office has followed the inauspicious footsteps of your predecessor Andy Thomas.” 

In her response, Shely said neither Adel nor the county attorney have ever represented Petersen in his individual capacity, as Langhofer claimed. Adel only represents the county, and Petersen (even as an elected official) is not her client but rather a constituent of the county Adel’s office represents, Shely said. Additionally, Adel’s lawyer refuted that she acted in her own self-interest “for personal or political purposes in advising the Board related to their powers under [statute],” further saying the assertion is “unprofessional” at the least.

By accusing Adel of being unethical, Langhofer has some obligation to report this to the State Bar of Arizona, at least according to the Bar’s ethics rules.

One rule states that if one lawyer thinks another is being unethical they “shall inform the appropriate professional authority.” 

Adel might even have her own case to file a Bar complaint against Langhofer for making that accusation, if she feels it is violating the rules of professional conduct. 

Mark Harrison, an attorney for Osborn Maledon, said that ethics rule is rarely used because “the threshold for reporting is high.” It needs to meet the standard for raising a “substantial question.”

“In this case, there is an obvious disagreement between Kory and Linda Shely about whether Allister violated any rule,” Harrison said. “However, without regard to their disagreement, it would be a stretch to state that – even if Allister arguably violated a rule that her conduct raises a “substantial question” about her “honesty or … fitness as a lawyer.” 

The State Bar says no complaint has been filed against Adel as of Dec. 10. 

allister_adel_05072018_1Adel is also being called to testify in Petersen’s hearing on Wednesday, but a spokesperson said she does not plan to attend. And there is nothing that says Adel is required to testify. 

The scheduled hearing, which begins at 1 p.m. on Dec. 11, promises to be filled with some fireworks as two of the witnesses Petersen intends to call will be friendly (top members of his staff), while county spokesman Fields Moseley will be questioned on “communications with members of the Board concerning Mr. Petersen and the true reasons for the purported suspension.”

Langhofer has long accused the Board of predetermining its decision on Petersen’s suspension even with a recent preliminary report concluding that there is not enough evidence to prove Petersen neglected his office. 

Petersen is also calling all five Board members; Sheriff Paul Penzone; County Recorder Adrian Fontes; County Treasurer Royce Flora; and Russell Pearce, an employee of Flora’s office. Petersen also plans to submit all the parking records of other county officials that he and Langhofer have obtained so far in an attempt to prove Petersen’s lackluster attendance isn’t unusual for an elected official. 

They received the records for Fontes and the five supervisors but no other county official as of Dec. 6. Langhofer and his client are still waiting on the other information they requested and complained about “the county’s failure to produce” additional records necessary for Petersen’s defense. 

Meanwhile, Petersen and the county were in settlement negotiations to have him resign from his County Assessor seat.

12 News reported that Petersen wanted nine months of his $77,000 salary with benefits for his resignation. John Doran, who is representing the county in Petersen’s suspension, countered with six months worth of benefits and an ultimatum to be accepted only mere hours later. 

Langhofer rejected the offer and replied 90 minutes later. “That is an unserious offer designed to end the conversation; of course Paul declines,” he wrote.

Petersen’s suspension in limbo after appeals hearing

Russell Pearce (left) gives his testimony about the suspension of Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen to Kory Langhofer, Petersen's attorney, during a suspension appeal hearing in front of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Dec. 11, 2019. (Photo courtesy of Maricopa County).
Russell Pearce (left) gives his testimony about the suspension of Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen to Kory Langhofer, Petersen’s attorney, during a suspension appeal hearing in front of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Dec. 11, 2019. (Photo courtesy of Maricopa County).

Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen’s suspension remains in limbo after roughly two hours of testimony Wednesday afternoon.

Petersen, who was not present at today’s hearing, is appealing his 120-day suspension. 

Kory Langhofer, who is representing the County Assessor, explained his client’s absence by saying he is saving his testimony for his criminal proceedings, which are ongoing in three states. 

Petersen is accused of paying women from the Marshall Islands to deliver their babies in the U.S. and of organizing the children’s adoption to American families. He is charged with smuggling and adoption fraud in Arkansas and Utah, and with defrauding the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System in Arizona.

Langhofer had planned to call several witnesses, but only had Chief Deputy Assessor Tim Boncoskey and Russell Pearce testify. Pearce currently works under County Treasurer Royce Flora. Flora and others from his office attended the hearing, but no other elected officials from Maricopa County did. 

The county’s supervisors, who unanimously voted to suspend Petersen on Oct. 29, said they won’t rule on his appeal until they see the final investigative report. The county had released its preliminary findings on December 6.

Both the Board and Langhofer gave opening remarks at the hearing. Supervisor Chairman Bill Gates said the statute cited to suspend the County Assessor is only used for that position or the County Treasurer, and therefore anything relating to other elected county officials is “irrelevant to today’s proceeding.”

Gates said Langhofer had been speculating his client was not suspended for “neglect of duty,” but because he was being charged with a crime. Gates insisted they suspended Peterson only on the grounds that he could conduct his official duties while in federal custody for 20 days and for using county resources for non-county business. 

The preliminary report, and testimony from Boncoskey, stated that even while Petersen was detained in Arkansas for nearly three weeks, the office ran smoothly and no deadlines were missed. Petersen and his Chief Deputy also spoke on the phone twice about office business during this span of time.

Things started to get testy when the Board’s attorney, John Doran, questioned Langhofer about why Petersen was not present. Langhofer said “there is no need for him to be here today,” adding that he would rely on the preliminary report and witness testimony. 

“Only Mr. Petersen knows what he could have or should have done in terms of his day-to-day routine as County Assessor that he didn’t do because he was too busy preparing legal pleadings,” Doran said. “And he’s not here to tell us what he didn’t do.” 

Langhofer argued that it should not be up to Petersen to prove his innocence. He cited how nothing in the preliminary report shows he neglected his duties, and added he had not seen anything outside of the report to the contrary. 

During his testimony, Boncoskey said the Assessor’s Office is not one person. “I believe every statutory duty of the assessor has been adhered to because that is our job,” he said. 

Boncoskey reiterated what the preliminary report concluded, saying the office was able to keep up with deadlines without missing a beat even during Petersen’s “time away.” He said Petersen treats all staff well, attends all necessary meetings, and, when able, he reached out to his office while in custody. 

Doran pressed if Boncoskey thinks Petersen had led by example “while he was incarcerated” and for having other people’s personal medical documents and photos on his county computer. 

Langhofer objected to both questions.

Pearce testified for two minutes before things wrapped up. 

Pearce said the Treasurer’s Office works closely with the Assessor’s Office and said his office has never had a problem working with the other one. 

“The only time we had any problem was after the suspension,” Pearce said. But, he said, once he got in touch with the chief deputy assessor, everything was fine. 

“It was short lived,” he said of the problem. 

Pearce said he thought the Board had probable cause to suspend Petersen while he was incarcerated, but contended that, once released, Petersen has a right to perform the duties of the office he was elected to.

Petersen’s 120-day suspension is set to expire at the end of February unless the Board opts to reverse its October decision.

Prostitution camp provided women for Petersen adoptions

This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor's Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor's Office via AP)
This undated photo provided by the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office shows Assessor Paul Petersen. Petersen has been indicted in an adoption fraud case, accused of arranging for dozens of pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to come to the U.S. to give their children up for adoption. Utah also has charged him on multiple felony counts, including human smuggling, sale of a child and communications fraud. (Maricopa County Assessor’s Office via AP)

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 his fixer in the Marshall Islands, told police that the majority of women she had recently helped Petersen recruit came from a prostitution camp where girls as young as 15 or 16 did sex work in exchange for food and housing. 

Jennet said when the girls at the prostitution camp would get pregnant, she would receive a call (the name of the caller was redacted in the documents) and she would contact Petersen.   

“Lynwood was asked who runs the camp, Lynwood said it was the government or businessmen,” Department of Public Safety Detective Samuel Hunt, who interrogated Jennet following her arrest, said in the sworn affidavit, which was recently unsealed.  

Jennet described the camp as a place where “young girls wait for fishermen to come and dock to do shopping and what not.”

The camp was on the main island of the Marshall Islands, a small island country in the Pacific Ocean where Petersen did his Mormon mission and later ran his adoption business in violation of a treaty between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands that allows islanders to visit the U.S. for any reason without needing a visa, except they cannot come to the U.S. to offer a baby for adoption. 

That provision of the treaty exists because of a long history of exploitation of Marshallese women by American adoption agencies. Petersen charged upwards of $35,000 for his adoption services, and paid the mothers, through a third party, around $10,000 per baby, though he would often skim expenses out of the final payments, the affidavit stated.

Petersen stands accused in three states of running a human smuggling scheme that brought pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to the U.S.

Months before news broke about Petersen’s multi-state indictment, investigators built a tax and Medicaid fraud case against Jennet, who then spilled the beans on the details of her relationship with Petersen in an interrogation room in Mesa with no attorney present. 

According to the affidavit, she was informed of her Miranda rights and she asked investigators what would happen if she refused to talk until an attorney was there. Investigators said they would end the interview and asked her to decide if she wanted to proceed.  

The records show she sat in silence for a few minutes and agreed to talk without an attorney present and hand over her cell phone so the officers could have access to her messages to Petersen and his paralegal, Megan Wolfe. 

During the interrogation, Jennet detailed the work she did for Petersen and the pregnant women, which included driving them around to appointments, interpreting and getting them food and supplies. Jennet was paid handsomely for her services, earning more than $200,000 between 2016 and 2018, including $103,000 in 2018 alone. She did not file individual income tax returns during that time. The documents state if she had filed those taxes, her income would have been too large to qualify for the state’s Medicaid program, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. 

In the conversation, Jennet relayed the information about her coming to America in 2006. She moved from the Republic of Marshall Islands to Arkansas in 2006, but said she was not pregnant at the time. She said she had 11 children, and that she used Petersen to place two of the three children she offered for adoption. The records state after she gave up the children for adoption, friends and other families reached out to her to find out who she used, thus beginning her contracting work for Petersen. 

Jennet told investigators that at the time of the questioning, there were four birthmothers staying at the fourplex Petersen owned in Mesa and one of the women was pregnant from being raped, which she said was investigated by the Republic of Marshall Islands. 

Department of Public Safety agents originally became aware of the adoption scheme from a potential adoptive parent who grew suspicious of Petersen’s operation. 

Petersen, nor his attorney, Kurt Altman, could be reached for comment on his potential involvement and knowledge that the women came from a prostitution camp. 

Since the indictment in October, Petersen was suspended from his elected position and subsequently resigned in January. He still stands trial in three states on 62 felony counts, 32 in Arizona alone. Petersen’s Arizona trial was postponed as of March 10.

Investigators also discovered that Petersen is the statutory agent for Democratic former Sen. Ed Ableser’s company, Ableser Family Counseling. 

While the documents didn’t shed light on what, exactly, Petersen’s role was with Ableser’s company, Arizona Corporation Commission records show that when he organized the limited liability company in 2009, while he was a state representative, Ableser used Petersen as his statutory agent. 

A statutory agent is essentially a business’ legal point of contact, and agrees to accept paperwork in case the business is sued. 

Ableser didn’t return a call on March 26 to answer questions about how the two knew each other — Petersen wasn’t in elected office then–  and the extent of Petersen’s involvement in his business. Ableser recently had his professional counseling license revoked by the Board of Behavioral Health Examiners after he violated state statute by engaging in “conduct or practice that is contrary to recognized standards of ethics in the behavioral health profession or that constitutes a danger to the health, welfare or safety of a client as it relates to the following section of the ACA Code of Ethics.” 

The complaint states he kept deficient records from a husband and wife who were sent to his counseling through their church, including by not obtaining a consent for treatment form from the couple. He signed a consent agreement with the board last November stating that he will stop practicing counseling and not apply for a new license for at least five years. 

Arizona Capitol Times, in conjunction with the ASU First Amendment Clinic, intervened in the Petersen case to unseal search and seizure warrants and other corresponding records. 

The clinic is designed to give law students hands-on experience helping journalists flex their First Amendment rights and hold the government accountable. 

The students — in the case of the Petersen warrants, Bobby Niska and Olivia Otter — are fully authorized by the Arizona Supreme Court to represent clients and practice law under the supervision of Gregg Leslie, the clinic’s director. 

The four warrants listed in the state’s discovery were sealed except for one, and Niska and Otter made the argument that all warrants are presumed open in Arizona. 

The Attorney General’s Office, which is leading the investigation into Petersen, did not contest the unseal motion. 

The seizure warrant and probable cause form provided details of the Petersen investigation and justification for seizing his assets, which included homes and more than $1 million in cash. The records were unsealed and our reporters received a redacted copy on March 26.

The Breakdown: Big money, no whammies

The Breakdown by the Arizona Capitol TimesHas your inbox been flooded with pleas from Dem PACs and fundraising groups? Are you getting a sense of 2018 deja vu? It’s no coincidence — many of the big spenders that came en masse to tight races last cycle have returned, gearing up for a 2020 election that has huge implications for Arizona Democrats. 

The NCSL was here last week to discuss redistricting, which will be a hot button issue come next year.

And we have the latest update on the Paul Petersen saga, his suspension appeal hearing happened last Wednesday and his suspension now remains in limbo.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Breakdown on iTunes and Stitcher.

 

Music in this episode included “Creative Minds,” “Funky Element” and “Energy” by Bensound.