SALT LAKE CITY — A former Arizona elected official accused of running an illegal adoption scheme in three states and smuggling several dozen pregnant women to Utah from the Marshall Islands is headed to prison.
A federal judge in Arkansas on Tuesday sentenced Paul Petersen, 45, to six years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. The judge also ordered him to pay a fine and court costs totaling $105,100.
Peterson earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens for commercial advantage and private financial gain in U.S. District Court in Arkansas.
“The defendant in this case violated the laws of three states and two countries during the course of his criminal scheme,” said David Clay Fowlkes, an assistant U.S. Attorney in Arkansas. “During the scheme, the defendant lied to state court judges, falsified records, encouraged others to lie during court proceedings, and manipulated birth mothers into consenting to adoptions they did not fully understand.”
Prosecutors say he illegally paid Marshallese women as much as $10,000 to have their babies in the United States and give them up for adoption.
Petersen served as the Maricopa County assessor and was an adoption lawyer licensed to practice in Utah, Arizona and Arkansas. In the past he was a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Marshall Islands.
Investigators in Utah found several Wasatch Front hospitals noticing an influx of Marshallese women giving birth and placing their babies for adoption. All of them reported living at the same West Valley house owned by Petersen.
One adoptive couple who visited the birth mother after she delivered told investigators the house seemed like a “baby mill.”
The couple saw more than 15 pregnant women living in the home, many having to sleep on mattresses on a bare floor. Investigators say the women, who arrived in Utah late in their pregnancies, received little to no prenatal care.
In June, Peterson entered guilty pleas in Salt Lake City’s 3rd District Court to three counts of human smuggling, a third-degree felony, and communications fraud, a second-degree felony. Sentencing is scheduled for next month.
Petersen resigned from his elected position in Arizona in January. He pleaded guilty in that state to collaborating to get state-funded health care for adoptive mothers, even though he knew the women didn’t live in Arizona.