Orson Mozes Arrested

Orson Mozes has been arrested in Florida tonight.

http://www.amw.com/fugitives/capture.cfm?id+56499


Miami police nab ‘Most Wanted’ suspect
Orson Mozes, 57, who is accused of running international adoption scam, escaped from law many times
By RYAN MILLS (Contact)
Originally published 8:01 p.m., Monday, December 29, 2008
Updated 8:19 p.m., Monday, December 29, 2008


Orson Mozes

NAPLES — One of “America’s Most Wanted” fugitives who was arrested and slipped through the cracks at least three times recently in Collier and Miami-Dade counties was arrested again Monday, and is behind bars after more than a year on the lam.

Miami-Dade police arrested 57-year-old Orson Mozes in Miami Beach, Detective Roy Rutland said. An anonymous tip initiated the investigation.

“They’ve been tracking him for a couple of days,” Rutland said.

Rutland said Mozes was “staying with somebody,” but declined to elaborate on the exact location of the arrest.

Mozes was wanted in California on 62 counts of theft by false pretenses after authorities say he ran an international adoption scam out of his mansion and swindled his customers out of more than $1 million. He’s been on the run for about a year and a half, and was featured on the television program “America’s Most Wanted” in August.

“We had heard absolutely nothing from him or about him until just last week,” said Norma Hansen, a criminal investigator for the district attorney’s office in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Mozes was arrested Nov. 14 in Collier County after Florida Highway Patrol trooper Roberto Castilla pulled over the white Mazda he was driving at 85 mph in a 70 mph zone on Interstate 75, reports said.

Mozes identified himself as “Jack Rose,” handing over a bogus California driver’s license and Social Security card. He was arrested on charges of possessing a forged or stolen driver’s license and driving without a license.

But Mozes posted an $8,000 bond and skipped town before his court appearance. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest.

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office, which manages the Collier County jail where Mozes was booked under the fake name, confirmed Monday that Orson Mozes and Jack Rose are, in fact, one in the same. The agency used fingerprints to make the confirmation.

After his Nov. 14 arrest in Collier, Miami Shores police arrested him Dec. 9, and Miami-Dade police arrested him Dec. 21. Mozes used the alias “Jerry Brosse” in those arrests, and bonded out and slipped away in all three arrests, authorities say.

A warrant for Mozes’ arrest was signed April 1 in Santa Barbara. According to an affidavit, Mozes operated an international adoption agency, and told prospective parents that he could “hold” children for them in foreign countries, primarily Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia.

The prospective parents, who saw photos of children in those countries on the Internet, then sent the agency a fee, generally between $7,000 and $11,000, to “hold” the child, the affidavit said.

After paying, a majority of the parents were told “Your child is no longer available,” reports said. On at least 10 occasions Mozes promised the same child to multiple adoptive parents, investigators said.

He took off with $500,000 in June 2007. At one point, Hansen said, Mozes wrote a letter to his sister telling her he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and needed to get away.

“We’re definitely happy he’s in custody,” Hansen said. “There are a lot of adoptive families who were overjoyed that he’s in custody.”

Dawn DeLorenzo, 34, of New Jersey, said she was promised three children by Mozes, but just before the adoptions were finalized, was told each time that the child’s mother changed her mind.

She spent two months in Kazakhstan attempting to adopt a child, and lost about $75,000 in the process, about a third of which went to Mozes’ agency.

“I felt like he was Teflon Don,” DeLorenzo said of Mozes and his string of arrests. “My husband and I couldn’t escape a parking ticket, and here’s this guy, he’s getting away with 62 felonies ... and they kept letting him go. It was very frustrating to say the least.”

DeLorenzo said she cried when she learned of Mozes’ arrest.

“I was so happy they finally caught up to him,” she said. “He’ll finally have to face up to his crimes. Not just to me, but to 61 other families.”

Mozes will eventually be extradited to California, Hansen said.

Collier County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Karie Partington said the FBI informed the Florida Highway Patrol sometime after the November arrest that “Jack Rose” was Mozes, and notified the highway patrol about his warrants.

“We don’t know when that notification happened,” Partington said. “That’s why we didn’t receive the notification.”

The Florida Highway Patrol is investigating the mix-up to find out what happened, agency spokesman Lt. Chris Miller said.

When asked about disconnects between the various agencies involved in the Collier arrest and release, and the possible usefulness in this scenario of a new warrant alert system recently installed in Lee County and under development in Collier County, Partington said: “We are working to see if there’s a way to avoid this in the future.”