US Federal Prosecutor Maria Shaba Lopez said, Thursday, December 3, 2020, that Howard Farley, a convicted drug dealer from Nebraska, had evaded authorities for a period of more than three decades using the identity of a dead child, before he was arrested Wednesday December 2. , While trying to get on board his private plane inside the hangar of his home in Florida.
According to a report by the New York Post , Friday, December 4, the aforementioned drug dealer, who is fugitive from justice (72 years), was convicted in 1985; He was accused of running the Southern Line, a railway line that was used to transport drugs to various parts of the United States.
Of the 73 people arrested in the case, Farley was the only one who managed to escape justice and was never arrested.
For 35 years, Farley is said to have lived in secret using the name of a Florida infant who died in 1955.
According to the lawsuit, Farley stole the identity of an individual known as "TB", who was born in Lake Worth, Florida in 1954, and died only three months later.
But his ruse was exposed when the government received a request to renew his passport in February with TB's name, date of birth, and Social Security number.
Investigators found records of a person’s death, only to discover that TB's Social Security data were not recorded until 1983, which is unusual for a person born in 1954.
So, on Wednesday, officers who wanted Farley to be found guilty of passport fraud went to his home in Wersdale, Florida, which he had been sharing with a 56-year-old Vietnamese woman, since at least 2007, according to authorities.
A fingerprint comparison confirmed that Farley has been the same person who has been wanted in Nebraska since 1985.