POLICE SEEKING NEWBURY PARK MAN : FUGITIVE CHARGED IN BOGUS MONEY ORDER CASE MISSED TRIAL.Byline: Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writer A Newbury Park man is being sought after failing to appear for trial on charges he used bogus money orders issued by an anti-government militia to purchase assault rifles A
Timothy Paul Kootenay failed to appear in late October and Ventura Superior Court Judge Steven Perren issued an arrest warrant for Kootenay on Thursday. Kootenay was originally arrested in Montana in April after failing to appear before the county grand jury to answer questions about the assualt rifle purchases. ``I felt that he was a flight risk. I've continued to maintain that he was a fight risk, even though he had been making (court) appearances,'' said Deputy District Attorney Mark Aveis. Kootenay, 36, is the first county resident charged with passing bogus money orders issued in recent years by the group Family Farm Preservation, based in Tigerton, Wisc. The grand jury indicted INDICTED, practice. When a man is accused by a bill of indictment preferred by a grand jury, he is said to be indicted. Kootenay in March following an investigation led by the U.S. Secret Service on charges of using two bogus money orders, totaling more than $5,200, to purchase six military-type assault rifles from an Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (1990 pop. 444,719), state capital, and seat of Oklahoma co., central Okla., on the North Canadian River; inc. 1890. The state's largest city, it is an important livestock market, a wholesale, distribution, industrial, and financial center, and a farm firearms dealer in April 1994. Kootenay faces two charges of grand theft, two charges of forgery forgery, in art forgery, in art, the false claim to authenticity for a work of art. The Nature of Forgery Because the provenance of works of art is seldom clear and because their origin is often judged by means of subtle factors, art by passing a fictitious instrument, and six charges of passing a fictitious money instrument. Montana authorities arrested Kootenay in a remote community in northwest Montana in April. Kootenay did not fight extradition extradition (ĕkstrədĭsh`ən), delivery of a person, suspected or convicted of a crime, by the state where he has taken refuge to the state that asserts jurisdiction over him. to California and remained in the Ventura County Jail until his mother posted bail of $25,000 in June. The prosecutor had argued unsuccessfully for bail of $100,000. Kootenay's mother filed a missing person report with the county Sheriff's Department in late October after he failed to appear for trial on Oct. 24. Kootenay has not been seen in the county since, said Deputy Public Defender public defender, governmental official who represents indigent persons accused of crime. U.S. Supreme Court decisions expanding the right to counsel to pretrial proceedings and holding that a person cannot be sentenced to even one day in jail unless a lawyer was Neil Quinn, who represents Kootenay. ``In that sense, we're back to square one,'' Aveis said of Kootenay's fugitive status. The sheriff's department is leading the search with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice charged with investigating all violations of federal laws except those assigned to some other federal agency. , Aveis said. |
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