Arizona county official arrested for child trafficking

Accused of smuggling pregnant women to the US to give birth and offering them money to give up their children

Quote:

Leaders in Arizona’s most populous county suspended Assessor Paul Petersen without pay for 120 days. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors doesn’t have the power to permanently remove him from his office, which determines the value of properties for tax purposes in Phoenix and its suburbs. Petersen, who is in federal custody, has so far refused to resign since his arrest on Oct. 8. His lawyer, Kurt Altman, said Petersen will fight to keep the $77,000-a-year job he was last elected to in 2016. Petersen, a Republican, has been indicted in federal court in Arkansas and also charged in Arizona and Utah with crimes that include human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The criminal case spans three years and involves some 75 adoptions, authorities said, with about 30 adoptions pending in three states. Petersen is accused of illegally paying women from the Marshall Islands to have their babies in the United States and give them up for adoption. The women were crammed into homes owned or rented by Petersen, sometimes with little to no prenatal care, court documents say. Petersen charged families $25,000 to $40,000 per adoption, prosecutors said.

Hey look, it's one of those "child traffickers" that we're told justifies border concentration camps, except apparently the call was coming from inside the house...

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2ppFzmK