McVey Set Free, Then Arrested a 2nd Time

Less than 24 hours after a Canadian judge released him from jail on a technicality, Charles McVey II, a former Anaheim businessman and fugitive, was re-arrested at a hotel near Vancouver International Airport.

McVey, 53, has been on the U.S. Custom Service’s most-wanted list since 1983, when he was charged with illegally exporting about $15 million worth of computer equipment to the Soviet Union. He fled the United States shortly before a Los Angeles grand jury indicted him and two others for allegedly selling state-of-the-art computers to the Soviets.

But McVey’s passion for fishing ended his years on the run. He was arrested Aug. 19 in the tiny Yukon Territory fishing village of Teslin by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police corporal who recognized the 300-pound fugitive while sitting next to him in a coffee shop.

Until late Wednesday, McVey was being held in a Pre-Trial Services Center in Vancouver while the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles sought his extradition.

But in response to a petition filed by McVey’s attorney, a British Columbia Supreme Court Justice ruled that the county judge who issued the initial arrest warrant was acting outside his jurisdiction and ordered McVey released.

But less than four hours after a judge issued a new warrant late Thursday morning, the Mounties had their man back in custody.

“It was good, solid, old-fashioned police work,” said Staff Sgt. Tom Hill, a member of the RCMP’s customs and excise section. “Our guys just got around to a lot of places and let a lot of people know we were looking for him.”

Hill said that only two Mounties were assigned to recapture McVey.

“We were kind of disappointed when he got out,” Hill said. “We are hoping for more success this time.”

Hill said McVey was returned to court late Thursday, but the Canadian Department of Justice attorneys handling the case could not be reached for comment on his status.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials said they were happy that McVey was back in custody.

“It’s excellent news,” said Alan Walls, deputy assistant regional commissioner for enforcement in the Custom Service’s Los Angeles office.

Walls said it was “unfortunate” that McVey was released on a legal technicality but that Customs officials were glad the new warrant was issued and the Mounties responded so quickly.

The case against McVey has remained open because the statute of limitations stops running when someone becomes a fugitive. William Fahey, the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case, recently filed an extradition request with the Canadian government and said he is working hard to bring McVey back to Los Angeles.

Cheryl Tobias, a Canadian Department of Justice attorney assigned to the case, said Thursday that the problem with the original warrant was that it was issued by a Vancouver county judge when McVey was thought to be in the Yukon Territory. Under Canadian law, she said, the warrant should have been issued by a judge sitting in the province where the fugitive is believed to be hiding.

New Warrant Issued

Tobias said Justice David Hinds, a Superior Court judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, issued the new arrest warrant shortly before noon Thursday.

Robert Anderson, McVey’s Vancouver attorney, could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

When he was arrested last month, McVey was holding a Guatemalan passport issued in Rome in the name of Carlos Juan Williams. McVey told the Mountie who arrested him the first time that he had spent some time in Guatemala.

McVey, who surrendered both times without resistance, was being tracked by computer by members of Interpol, a international law enforcement agency, customs officials said.

McVey lived in Villa Park and owned several high-technology businesses in Anaheim before he was indicted four years ago. The 1983 indictment charged McVey and two others--Rold Leinhard, a Swiss national, and Yuri Boyarinov, a Soviet national--with illegally exporting high-technology equipment to the Soviet Union during a 4 1/2-year period.

According to the indictment, McVey ordered the equipment to be delivered to his Orange County companies, where his staff modified it and shipped it to Leinhard, a freight forwarder in Zurich, Switzerland. Leinhard then shipped the computer products to Boyarinov, a senior consultant with V/O Electronorgtechnica, which acted as a Soviet purchasing agency.

McVey had visited the Soviet Union several times and sent an associate to conduct training classes for Soviet computer technicians, the indictment said. When he was indicted in March, 1983, McVey denied the charges through his attorneys.

Last year, the Department of Commerce fined McVey $1.24 million and revoked his export privileges for 30 years.