Fayetteville, Ark. • The Arizona official who is accused of running an adoption-fraud scheme involving smuggling women from a country in the Pacific asked an Arkansas court to delay his trail for 10 months, arguing the defense has already received hundreds of documents related to charges.
Prosecutors say Maricopa County Assessor Paul Petersen paid pregnant women from the Marshall Islands, a string of islands about 2,500 miles west of Hawaii, to give up their babies for adoption in the U.S. He faces a total of 62 charges in Arkansas, Arizona and Utah.
Petersen, 44, is free on separate bonds in the different states but must wear a GPS monitoring device per a federal court order.