Mark Phillips arrested after 31 years on the run

[pearlemae]

I think I would have at least had the sense not to use my real name. Sorta like here, but I don't think Florida would give my an ID with the name Pearlemae, but then whos know maybe they would. Seems like a waste of time after 30 years. At 250 and LB musta been some serious brick weed, thats all we got in the 70's for the most part.

 

[I.M. Boggled]

He believed that his charges had been dropped...

He believed that his charges had been dropped...

Palm Beach Post
Jan. 28, 2011

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.

While federal marshals hunted fugitive, other agencies helped him return to U.S.

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 and cocaine.

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 Cocaine Cowboys, with customized boats.
They used the boats to hide and transport multi-ton ship ments of marijuana and cocaine 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."

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/c...d-fugitive-other-agencies-helped-1217090.html

 

[AmeriSkunk]

Guys living on the run isn't as easy as just saying its better than jail. In some cases its not, I'm not talking broke money wise either. I'm talking your wife is somewhere and you know there watching her so you can't go to see her call her. There is 10,000,000 unforseen problems that we couldn't even come up with if we tried. You can't get a job which leads to more illegal shit, ect.

Plus love is a real fucking problem as far as staying on the run goes. That will make you do things you know you shouldn't to get a feeling that only that person gives you. I mean that's basically what it is.

So yeah being free and miserable to some may be better but depending on a persons life and those people around him. A person may need to just man the fuck up and take what you have coming to you. So to me its on a person to person to basis weather its worth it to run or not. I've done both, i have a great friend who has been otr for 10yrs and my heart aches for him because I know he wants a better life than what he is being forced to live right now. He is going to turn himself in after he saves up the ammount of money he will need. So in a way I'm sure this dude is relieved to be caught

 

[Bazarocka]

BUMMER and In Florida.............Police State.............and the same Judge is still hanging around.

 

[westfalia]

Um....maybe he looked at this way. Now he'll have a roof over his head and government health care at no cost. That sounds like security in old age.

 

[headband 707]

Yeah some KID in the USA just got 41 fucking years for 3 ounces of cannabis!!!! WTF??? This pathetic story about some asshole coming back from Iran and saying all drugs are terrorist threats to the USA .. The real joke is that they actually got away with doing this to this poor kid.. There is something seriously wrong when they get away with this shit.. peace out Headband707

 

[DHF]

Where I live they dole out yr and a day sentences "in state prison" for 1/4 oz possession charges on kids that can`t afford a real lawyer......

I was around when all that bullshit hype was goin on bout Marc`s disappearance....., I`d have bailed myself.......

The problem bout comin back home was trusting LEO.....in ANY form.....regardless of the yrs and so-called "statute of limitations"....

If you`re not legal........don`t take no wooden nickels in a "non-med" state......talk`s cheap as ta whatchas`ll end up with as far as jail time......

Incarceration`s a very profitable business down here in Hell procuring state contracts and utilizing "prison labor" from the minimum security camps ..........

Peace...DHF.........

 

[cannascholar]

A year and a day for a 7? Damn you must be in the South.

 

[BiG H3rB Tr3E]

I bet the 31 years spent worrying about getting busted were alot worse than any of us can imagine. They should pardon the guy based on the mental suffering he has endured for so damn long and not dropped dead from it already. Poor old dude I wonder if he still ever got high?

look at his picture. says hes 62 but he looks easily 80+ years old... i just dont understand why you would come back to the US. the guy must have had money if he was penthouse living in NYC....

but regardless. what a joke this is to arrest some old guy and let him die in prison...

 

[BIG JT]

If the laws weren't so bad down in FL, thats where I'd be. I would never want to end up in a prison down there though....so the opposite end of 95 is where I stay

 

[hazemaker]

um HOW MUCH CARTEL VIOLENCE was going on in the 70's??? Wasnt the violence later on when Reagan was holding office with darth vader his ex cia sidekick? I mean was it us funded militia that started the cocaine wars, stirred up the price, transported it into the usa and ran guns back to central america on the return trips, and the same regime that was pushn crack in los angeles and leaving train loads of weapons in watts to become mureder weapons. Your actually going to lecture about this guy taking the high road when he was before the storm???And havent you paid attention, Cannabis is SCHEDULE 1 and cocaine is what schedule 2 or 3 i get confused, obviously the justice department has rated cannabis as the mother of all drug addictions!!!!!!!!!!1

 

[designer]

Now all the health bills of this aging fugitive will be the USA's bill.

 

[greenmatter]

How many millions were wasted chasing this guy around for 30+ years?
How stupid

but we gave jim morrison a full pardon and talked about doing the same for billy the kid, thats something aint it, people like you don't understand what it takes to be a politician.

 

[hurdy gurdy man]

It's stories like this that push change.