SPOKANE, Wash.—A confessed bank swindler who fled from a federal courtroom and stranded his lawyer, apparently after seeing he was about to be arrested, has been caught in Boulder.
Acting on an anonymous tip, two police officers arrested John Earl Petersen, 56, when he answered a knock on the door to his room at the University Inn at 12:45 a.m. Sunday, Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said.
Officers also found a blond wig and several books about changing identity, and impounded a late-model black Cadillac DTS that was reported stolen in Spokane after Petersen failed to make payments, Huntley said.
Petersen walked out of U.S. District Court on Dec. 11. Officials said he apparently saw legal documents that showed he was going to be taken into custody because his supervised release had been revoked for parole violations. They say he took off under the noses of FBI agents, deputy U.S. marshals and federal probation officers in the courtroom.
Defense lawyer Bevan J. Maxey, who had caught a ride from Peterson to court from his north side law office, was stranded.
Maxey told The Associated Press on Wednesday he had not spoken with Peterson and was awaiting notification of his client’s return to Spokane.
Petersen was the mastermind in a fraud scheme from 1990 to 1996 that led to the $11 million collapse of Mountain Bank of Whitefish, Mont. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering but got a substantially reduced sentence of five years in 1998 by agreeing to testify against former bank officers he had bribed.
More recently, he was living in Spokane at the home of his 95-year-old aunt, apparently using her bank account to lavishly remodel the residence after moving her into a nursing home, according to an affidavit from a federal probation officer.
Petersen was summoned to court in March 2006 for violating conditions of his supervised release, which was supposed to run through next May, but remained at large after promising to provide financial information, avoid liquor and other drugs and meet other conditions.
He was cited again on Nov. 28 for violating supervised release.
Details of the accusation that led to the hearing from which he fled have been withheld.
