Suspected ‘Techno-Bandit’ McVey Held by Canada Immigration Officials

A week after the United States lost a second bid to extradite him on technology smuggling charges, former Orange County businessman Charles J. McVey was ordered detained in British Columbia on Wednesday on a charge of entering Canada illegally.

McVey was arrested during a routine traffic stop by Canadian authorities Sunday, four days after the final U.S. extradition attempt on the smuggling charges failed and McVey was released from jail, where he had been held since August, 1987. At a brief deportation hearing in Vancouver on Wednesday, McVey, 65, was ordered detained until the immigration proceeding is finished, said Frederick L. Ringham, spokesman for the immigration office in Vancouver. Another hearing was set for Saturday.

U.S. investigators suspect that McVey is one of the world’s top “techno-bandits.” Two federal indictments issued in California accuse him of masterminding plots to pass computer and satellite secrets to the Soviet Union. McVey is a former Villa Park resident who owned several high-technology businesses in Anaheim.

Sunday’s arrest was the latest episode in his unusual case.

In 1983, just weeks before a federal grand jury in Los Angeles returned an indictment accusing him of technology smuggling, McVey fled the United States. He was arrested on a fluke in August, 1987, when a Mountie who had seen a wanted poster issued for McVey spotted him at a coffee shop in Canada’s remote Yukon Territory.

Three months later, a federal grand jury in San Jose, Calif., returned an indictment accusing McVey of other technology smuggling violations.

An appeals court in British Columbia rejected a bid by the United States to extradite him on the Los Angeles case in November, 1988, but he remained jailed in British Columbia in connection with the San Jose case until Nov. 8, when an appeals court turned back an effort to extradite him on the second set of charges. McVey was freed from jail that day.

Two days later, however, the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission filed an administrative report accusing McVey having entered Canada using false documentation, and a warrant was issued, Ringham said.

Ringham said the United States government exerted no influence over the decision to pursue the Canadian immigration charges. Canadian immigration officials began moving against McVey after his arrest in August, 1987, but they postponed further action until the matter of his U.S. extradition was resolved.

Sgt. Ian Robertson of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said McVey was arrested Sunday in Osoyoos, a Canadian border town about 150 miles northeast of Seattle. Once again, it was a fluke. A constable who was monitoring traffic had stopped a car in which McVey was a passenger, and the constable noticed that McVey was not wearing a seat belt, Robertson said.

“We weren’t looking for criminals,” Robertson said. “We were just stopping people routinely on traffic violations. The constable ran a computer check and found the warrant from immigration. They said, ‘Hold him,’ so we did.”