In October of 2019, former elected county assessor for Maricopa County Paul Petersen was charged by Utah’s lawyer normal with 11 felonies. These felonies included “human smuggling, sale of a kid and communications fraud.” The costs stemmed from what prosecutors stated was an unlawful “adoption scheme” the place Petersen recruited and transported a minimum of 40 pregnant girls from the Republic of the Marshall Islands to Utah, the place they birthed after which gave up their infants. Petersen lower a plea deal in Arizona and was sentenced to 74 months in jail.
On Jan. 21, Petersen started his sentence at a federal jail close to El Paso, Texas. Petersen continues to be dealing with sentencing for fraud convictions in Arizona and the human trafficking convictions in Utah. The Related Press experiences that Petersen is interesting the sentencing within the Arizona case after the choose gave him two years greater than the rules advocate.