In 1985, federal agents carried out an operation in Nebraska to dismantle a cocaine trafficking network. Of the 74 suspected criminals, 73 were arrested. And the one who escaped the police was the leader of the gang Howard Fairlie. Until last year, 72-year-old Fairley, who was identified by fraudulent documents as Tim Brown, lived in Wirsdade, Florida with a woman whom he met in the 1980s and whom he married in 1993.
Fairley used documents from the real Tim Brown – a baby who died in 1950 – and only raised law enforcement suspicion last year when he applied for a new passport. A data check revealed a record of the infant’s death in the archive, and when the agents visited Brown in his hangar at the local airport and took his fingerprints, they realized that they had a long-wanted perpetrator in front of them.
True, the statute of limitations on drug trafficking charges expired in 2014, but law enforcement agencies have sufficient grounds to bring other charges against Fairleigh, including fraud with obtaining a false passport, identity theft, and illegal possession of weapons. If he is found guilty on these charges, he will most likely spend the rest of his life in prison. His wife was also charged with passport fraud and perjury to law enforcement agencies.
Newspaper headline:
“Quiet” American