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While one federal agency was doggedly hunting a fugitive drug smuggler who fled the country 31 years ago, others arranged for his return to South Florida and even loaned him money for housing when he landed here.
As a wanted man living in Chile last year, Mark Steven Phillips, 62, who supplied customized boats for a massive South Florida drug-smuggling operation in the 1970s, went to the U.S. Embassy in Santiago and asked to be sent home, officials said.
"At Mr. Phillips' request, the embassy worked with law enforcement and state department officials to facilitate Mr. Phillips' return to the U.S. in April 2010," said an embassy spokesman in Santiago. "According to our information, he entered without incident and was in possession of a valid U.S. passport issued according to normal protocols."
Phillips landed in Miami and ultimately made his way to the Century Village retirement community in suburban West Palm beach, where U.S. Marshals arrested him Thursday on a 31-year-old warrant.
Phillips' family members have said the embassy believed the warrant had been vacated. The embassy spokesman would not comment on the warrant, but the Florida Department of Children and Families was under the same impression.
Alfredo Castaneda, DCF's repatriation coordinator for South Florida, said Thursday that the embassy told his agency the charges had been dropped.
But, in fact, that had never happened. And marshals were still hunting him down.
When the fugitive reached South Florida, DCF helped him get on his feet.
"All of the screening has to be done before" DCF gets involved, Castaneda said.
When Phillips arrived last year, DCF moved him into a Rodeway Inn on Southwest 14th Street near Jackson Memorial Hospital, Castaneda said Thursday, paying for the room with money passed from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to the Florida DCF through the U.S. branch of the International Social Service.
Castaneda said Thursday that DCF often uses the Miami Rodeway Inn when repatriating people.
As part of the federal program, Phillips, like other newly repatriated citizens, agreed to repay the housing costs to the federal government, which would reimburse the state.
After installing him in the Rodeway Inn, DCF aided Phillips in getting a Florida ID card, which listed his home address as room 430 at the motel.
Completely unaware of any of this, federal marshals were looking for Phillips on the arrest warrant for failing to appear in court in 1979. The day he skipped town, Phillips was accused of conspiring with a trail-blazing drug smuggling operation to flood South Florida with tons of marijuana.
In league with the Black Tuna gang between 1974 and 1978, Phillips used his family's Fort Lauderdale yacht company to outfit the smugglers, who predated the infamous C*caine Cowboys, with customized boats. They used the boats to hide and transport multi-ton shipments of marijuana into South Florida, federal prosecutors said.
Phillips fled Miami in 1979 to avoid prosecution on federal racketeering, drug possession and other crimes. He was convicted in absentia in 1980, and, so far as the federal government is concerned has been a fugitive ever since.
Phillips spent the better part of the past 30 years bouncing from Chile, where he married a local woman and ran a fishing company, to Germany and back again, stopping briefly in New York before returning to Santiago, marshals said.
He endured a massive earthquake in Chile last year before approaching the embassy, which consulted the state department and federal law enforcement and arranged for his return to the U.S., the embassy spokesman said.
If embassy officials talked to a law enforcement agency, it wasn't the U.S. Marshals Service in South Florida, said Senior Inspector Barry Golden.
When marshals learned Phillips had gotten a Florida ID card in September, they went to the Rodeway Inn, where DCF had placed him, to make an arrest. He wasn't there.
By then, Phillips had rented a modest condo in Century Village. He lived there in obscurity, never hanging up his clothes, for a month until marshals woke him up about 10 a.m. Thursday and cuffed him.
"The U.S. Marshals Service was not involved in any way whatsoever in him getting into this country. If the embassy or another federal agency helped him out somehow, we weren't involved in that," Golden said.
"All that doesn't matter," Golden added. "What does matter, he's here in the U.S., he was here in West Palm Beach. We were able to develop information, and we went out and arrested him on a valid warrant.
"Whatever happened in Chile," Golden said, "the federal warrant here was still in place."
News Hawk: MedicalNeed 420 MAGAZINE
Source
almbeachpost.com
Author: Michael LaForgia
Contact: PalmBeachPost.com
Copyright: 2011 The Palm Beach Post
Website:While federal marshals hunted fugitive, other agencies helped him return to U.S.
As a wanted man living in Chile last year, Mark Steven Phillips, 62, who supplied customized boats for a massive South Florida drug-smuggling operation in the 1970s, went to the U.S. Embassy in Santiago and asked to be sent home, officials said.
"At Mr. Phillips' request, the embassy worked with law enforcement and state department officials to facilitate Mr. Phillips' return to the U.S. in April 2010," said an embassy spokesman in Santiago. "According to our information, he entered without incident and was in possession of a valid U.S. passport issued according to normal protocols."
Phillips landed in Miami and ultimately made his way to the Century Village retirement community in suburban West Palm beach, where U.S. Marshals arrested him Thursday on a 31-year-old warrant.
Phillips' family members have said the embassy believed the warrant had been vacated. The embassy spokesman would not comment on the warrant, but the Florida Department of Children and Families was under the same impression.
Alfredo Castaneda, DCF's repatriation coordinator for South Florida, said Thursday that the embassy told his agency the charges had been dropped.
But, in fact, that had never happened. And marshals were still hunting him down.
When the fugitive reached South Florida, DCF helped him get on his feet.
"All of the screening has to be done before" DCF gets involved, Castaneda said.
When Phillips arrived last year, DCF moved him into a Rodeway Inn on Southwest 14th Street near Jackson Memorial Hospital, Castaneda said Thursday, paying for the room with money passed from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to the Florida DCF through the U.S. branch of the International Social Service.
Castaneda said Thursday that DCF often uses the Miami Rodeway Inn when repatriating people.
As part of the federal program, Phillips, like other newly repatriated citizens, agreed to repay the housing costs to the federal government, which would reimburse the state.
After installing him in the Rodeway Inn, DCF aided Phillips in getting a Florida ID card, which listed his home address as room 430 at the motel.
Completely unaware of any of this, federal marshals were looking for Phillips on the arrest warrant for failing to appear in court in 1979. The day he skipped town, Phillips was accused of conspiring with a trail-blazing drug smuggling operation to flood South Florida with tons of marijuana.
In league with the Black Tuna gang between 1974 and 1978, Phillips used his family's Fort Lauderdale yacht company to outfit the smugglers, who predated the infamous C*caine Cowboys, with customized boats. They used the boats to hide and transport multi-ton shipments of marijuana into South Florida, federal prosecutors said.
Phillips fled Miami in 1979 to avoid prosecution on federal racketeering, drug possession and other crimes. He was convicted in absentia in 1980, and, so far as the federal government is concerned has been a fugitive ever since.
Phillips spent the better part of the past 30 years bouncing from Chile, where he married a local woman and ran a fishing company, to Germany and back again, stopping briefly in New York before returning to Santiago, marshals said.
He endured a massive earthquake in Chile last year before approaching the embassy, which consulted the state department and federal law enforcement and arranged for his return to the U.S., the embassy spokesman said.
If embassy officials talked to a law enforcement agency, it wasn't the U.S. Marshals Service in South Florida, said Senior Inspector Barry Golden.
When marshals learned Phillips had gotten a Florida ID card in September, they went to the Rodeway Inn, where DCF had placed him, to make an arrest. He wasn't there.
By then, Phillips had rented a modest condo in Century Village. He lived there in obscurity, never hanging up his clothes, for a month until marshals woke him up about 10 a.m. Thursday and cuffed him.
"The U.S. Marshals Service was not involved in any way whatsoever in him getting into this country. If the embassy or another federal agency helped him out somehow, we weren't involved in that," Golden said.
"All that doesn't matter," Golden added. "What does matter, he's here in the U.S., he was here in West Palm Beach. We were able to develop information, and we went out and arrested him on a valid warrant.
"Whatever happened in Chile," Golden said, "the federal warrant here was still in place."
News Hawk: MedicalNeed 420 MAGAZINE
Source
almbeachpost.comAuthor: Michael LaForgia
Contact: PalmBeachPost.com
Copyright: 2011 The Palm Beach Post
Website:While federal marshals hunted fugitive, other agencies helped him return to U.S.
