Non-custodial parents who neglect to pay support for their children usually face wage garnishment or some other form of support recovery. Sometimes the offense is so egregious and the amount of delinquent support is so high that authorities must arrest the parent. However the situation gets worse if that parent chooses to flee the country.
FBI agents caught a former Brooklyn anesthesiologist who thought he might sneak back into the country without notice, after living overseas for several years. The 51-year-old man, accused of abandoning his wife and three children, was picked up at an airport last month with a $1.6 million debt - much of it child support -- owed to his former family.
The wealthy physician's tale and past-due child support bill stretch more than six years into the past, when the doctor sold off the couple's $975,000 Midwood home and assets and swiped his wife's medical degree and jewelry. The wife was uninformed of the activity until she and the children returned to a vacant home after a 2006 Hong Kong vacation.
New homeowners arrived as the shocked spouse and the children, ages 2 to 8, watched. The physical, emotional and financial abandonment of her husband forced her and the children to move into a homeless shelter.
The estranged wife filed for divorce and learned that her husband had fled the U.S. The doctor apparently divorced his wife in Bangladesh and remarried. He and his new wife reportedly lived extravagantly in Dhaka, out of the U.S. government's reach for several years.
The New York wife and mother obtained a divorce settlement last year that required the ex-husband to reimburse his wife for half the sale of the marital property. Child support payments of nearly$9,700 a month were added. The husband and father ignored the court until agents intercepted the doctor as he deplaned in the U.S.
He was imprisoned as a fugitive after he could not come up with $500,000 bail.
Source: dailymail.co.uk, "'He's a despicable human being': America's most wanted deadbeat dad arrested owing $1.6m in child support after he left wife and three kids homeless to live in lap of luxury overseas," Helen Pow, Nov. 4, 2012
