Eric Conn: Honduras Deports Kentucky Lawyer Sought in $550M Fraud Case

Eric Conn, a Kentucky lawyer who was arrested Monday in Honduras, has been deported to the United States after pleading guilty to charges over his role in a more than $550 million disability fraud scheme.

Kentucky-born Conn, 57, who was on the most wanted list of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, was arrested on Monday in the Honduran coastal city of La Ceiba as he left a restaurant.

"U.S. citizen Eric Conn was today handed over to FBI agents and is traveling to Lexington, Kentucky," Jorge Galindo, spokesman for Honduras' Technical Criminal Investigation Agency, said.

Conn, a resident of Pikeville, Kentucky, participated in a scheme between 2004 and 2016 that involved submitting thousands of falsified medical documents to the U.S. Social Security Administration, U.S. prosecutors have said.

The arrest and deportation came less than five months after a U.S. district judge in Lexington, Kentucky, sentenced Conn in absentia to 12 years in prison.

Conn pleaded guilty in March to charges of theft of government money and payment of gratuities, but fled in June, after he had been placed under house arrest with a GPS ankle monitor.

The ankle monitor was found in Lexington, along a road in a backpack, the FBI's most wanted page said.

A truck Conn is believed to have used during his escape was discovered in New Mexico near the border with Mexico, the FBI said in July.

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