When the FBI Comes Calling…®
Sunday, June 05, 2005
A discarded letter cracks international case
U.S. faces potentially long process in seeking return of former stripper.
By Steven Kreytak AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Early one morning in October, U.S. Marshals Service deputies parked near a house on Manx Drive in Round Rock and waited for the garbage truck.
When it arrived and workers emptied the container set out by the sister of stripper-turned- NASCAR-team-owner- turned-fugitive Fatemeh Angela Harkness, the deputies pulled up, flashed their badges and took the trash.
They went to a parking garage across from the federal courthouse in downtown Austin and began sorting through the detritus piece by piece. Then they found a letter addressed to the United Arab Emirates embassy in Washington that used Harkness' maiden name, Karimkhani.
It began: "I am sending this document on behalf of my sister, Fatemeh Karimkhani, who is currently living in Dubai . . ."
"We hit pay dirt," said Hector Gomez, the supervisory deputy U.S. marshal in Austin.
Harkness had been wanted since skipping town in March 2004 while awaiting sentencing for conspiring with an Austin banker to embezzle about $1 million, which the pair used to start a NASCAR racing team.
The Iranian-born Harkness, with her 4-year-old daughter in tow, had apparently been trying to make a new life in Dubai working as a beautician.
On May 27, authorities in the Persian Gulf city arrested Harkness after receiving a U.S. Justice Department alert. Justice Department officials in Washington are now trying to secure her return from a country that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
"The (United Arab Emirates officials) arrested her," Gomez said. "We have every indication that they intend to cooperate."
Harkness grew up in Germany, according to a biography distributed to potential investors for the racing team. She arrived in Central Texas in the late 1990s and then moved to California, where she married a former judge, Dion Lee Harkness, who died in 2001.
Harkness returned to Central Texas and got a job dancing at the Yellow Rose, the topless nightclub in North Austin. There she met Gary D. Jones, a vice president at Wells Fargo & Co.
It is not clear how the pair became interested in NASCAR, but federal prosecutors say they used money from loans Jones processed at the bank with bogus information - including several in Harkness' name-to start Angela's Motorsports.
Operating out of Harkness' Round Rock house, they hired veteran driver Mike McLaughlin, bought cars and outfitted a garage, drawing the curiosity of the NASCAR community. Some questioned where they got the money for a racing team, which can cost several million dollars a year.
Angela's Motorsports entered stock cars in the Busch Series, a second-tier racing circuit. But by early 2003, the team's checks started bouncing, and it disappeared from the racing scene.
A year later, Harkness was charged with and later pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. She cooperated with authorities and agreed to testify against Jones if necessary. She was freed on a bond that required her to pay no money up front and $5,000 if she failed to show up for court dates. She faces up to five years in prison.
Meanwhile, Jones was charged in February 2004 and later admitted that he used his job at the bank to prepare 12 loans using several people's names, including his sister's, and kept the money for himself, court documents show. He was sentenced in August to three years and 10 months in federal prison.
By that time, Harkness had skipped town. In March 2004, a sister in Round Rock told a pretrial services officer doing a routine check that Harkness had probably fled the country. A warrant was issued for her arrest, and the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, led by the U.S. marshals in Austin, took the case.
Deputies knew that Harkness had siblings in Germany and France, but they focused on her connections in Central Texas, Gomez said.
Harkness has four sisters in Central Texas, and the task force pinpointed their names, addresses and vehicles. The marshals then ran those vehicles through a database that tracks U.S. border crossings and learned that a car belonging to one of the sisters had crossed the Rio Grande into El Paso just after Harkness disappeared.
That car, a 2002 Mercedes Benz, belonged to Harkness' sister Bita Whitten in Round Rock. Harkness was ordered to live with Whitten under the terms of her bond.
"At that point, we focused on Bita," Gomez said.
The trail went cold in late summer 2004, and in October deputies turned to an old-fashioned investigative technique: searching garbage.
In the letters deputies found in the trash, Whitten, who declined to comment for this story, told the United Arab Emirates embassy that her sister had a job offer in Dubai. She indicated that someone had sent documents to the embassy confirming that Harkness had a cosmetology license, and she implored the office to process the documents promptly so Harkness could work.
By November, U.S. marshals put all of the information they knew about Harkness in an Interpol "red notice," a global request for her arrest. It is unclear how she was caught, but local marshals celebrated when they learned recently that Harkness was in the custody of Dubai authorities.
The lead federal prosecutor on the case, Mark Lane, said getting Harkness back to Austin will be the job of the Justice Department in Washington.
The United States has extradition treaties with more than 100 foreign governments, said Douglas McNabb, a Houston lawyer whose firm specializes in international criminal defense.
McNabb said that even without a treaty, there is a good chance U.S. authorities will get Harkness back to Austin for sentencing. Authorities in Dubai may deport her if she is in the country illegally or if her visa expires. Or they could just hand Harkness over to U.S. authorities, he said.
The process can take a while.
Federal prosecutors in Austin have been working since November with Turkish officials for the return of Firooz Deljavan and his wife, Rosemary Rios, who were accused of defrauding banks and mortgage companies out of $15 million in a real estate scam. More than 20 other defendants are also awaiting trial in that case. Deljavan and Rios were arrested trying to leave Turkey - which has an extradition agreement with the United States - for his native Iran.
Austin police Sgt. John Neff said homicide detectives think that most of the 35 people charged with murder in Austin but not arrested are in Mexico, a country that has an extradition treaty with the United States. Mexico, Neff said, will not extradite anyone facing the death penalty or life in prison, and he doesn't know of any murder suspects being returned to Austin from Mexico.
Investigators say that searching for international fugitives requires cooperation with foreign governments as well as a little luck.
Harkness "left some tracks, and we capitalized," Gomez said. "Sometimes when you are catching crooks you focus in on a few people and watch them until they make a mistake."