The Nation - News from Dec. 23, 1987
A former New Jersey state senator who faked a scuba diving death to avoid a prison term for a kickback conviction has been apprehended and is being held on an island in the Indian Ocean, authorities said. The FBI refused to discuss details of the apprehension of David Friedland on the Maldive Islands southwest of Sri Lanka. Friedland, 50, had evaded authorities since Labor Day, 1985, when he donned scuba diving gear, took a boat ride off Grand Bahama Island in the West Indies and jumped overboard. Friedland disappeared three weeks before he was to ask a federal judge to reduce his seven-year prison sentence. He was convicted in 1980 of accepting $360,000 in kickbacks in return for arranging a $4-million loan from the pension fund of Teamsters Local 701 in North Brunswick.
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