“This plea agreement is one more step on a long road towards putting an end to the illegal adoption practices that have long plagued the Marshallese community in our district,” Mr. Fowlkes said in a statement.
Kurt M. Altman, a lawyer for Mr. Petersen, said in an interview, “I think the evidence shows none of these ladies were mistreated.” He also said that his client did not know at the time that the adoptions were improper. “I think he realizes now,” he said.
None of the adoptions that Mr. Petersen helped to arrange will be affected by his guilty plea, Mr. Fowlkes said in an interview. The adoptive parents “had no idea about the fraudulent nature” of Mr. Petersen’s behavior, he said. Those parents, along with the birth mothers, were “very vulnerable victims,” he said.
According to the plea agreement in the federal case, Mr. Peterson paid four pregnant women who are citizens of the Marshall Islands and did not have visas to travel to the United States for the purpose of adoption. Citizens from that nation are forbidden to come to the United States for that purpose without a visa under a compact between the two countries dating to 1983. Citizens of the islands, which are in the Pacific Ocean, east of Papa New Guinea, are free to enter and work in the United States.
Federal prosecutors cited paperwork that Mr. Petersen had filed in four separate adoptions that took place in Arkansas in 2014 and 2015. In those documents, Mr. Petersen said he was paid as much as $30,000 for his work as a “legal facilitator” while the birth mothers were paid between $7,3000 and $10,800 officials said.
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