/ Cory Doctorow / 2:01 am Mon Dec 14, 2009

Fugitive hides from arrest warrant by working at the DHS

Tahaya Buchanan, an American fugitive who'd been on the run for more than two years, dodging a national arrest warrant for insurance fraud, has spent her years underground gainfully employed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Buchanan had been indicted in New Jersey for insurance fraud in 2007, and a warrant for her arrest was issued that December and was posted to the National Crime Information Center in January 2008. New Jersey prosecutor Michael Morris said they believed Buchanan had been working for Homeland Security in New Jersey in 2007, and might have been transferred to the department's immigration office in Georgia at some point during the investigation.

That's where authorities lost track of her.

"We found it surprising [and] alarming," Morris said, "that an employee of the Department of Homeland Security is a fraudster, and we do not understand how she could have remained employed there with an open criminal warrant for her arrest remaining on the interstate system without being discovered."

Fugitive Located Inside Homeland Security Department Office
Previously:

16

  1. Now if she had tried to get on a plane with a toenail clipper or cross the border while asking too many questions, then, THEN she would have been nailed.

  2. Insurance fraud in 2007? I’m surprised she wasn’t offered an oversight job at the Department of
    Commerce or the Treasury.

  3. “We found it surprising [and] alarming,” Morris said, “that an employee of the Department of Homeland Security is a fraudster..”

    Am I the only one not surprised?

  4. I’m not surprised. I worked at DHS back in the day. My boss was the business partner of the Scientologist who broke into NARA. He was a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. But I could never shake the feeling that he was up to no good.

  6. “…we do not understand how she could have remained employed there with an open criminal warrant for her arrest remaining on the interstate system without being discovered.”

    Well, I do understand.

  7. Ah, the old – transferred to the department’s immigration office in Georgia at some point during the investigation – trick. sneaky.

  8. Doesn’t this prove the old saying (well I think its old at least) “the best place to hide is in plain sight” ?

    On a another note, I think our priorities as a nation are completely fucked if we can allow a fugitive to join the ranks of those who are supposed to protect us, but prevent an average citizen from carrying too much breast milk on board a plane. Sure, she is just wanted for insurance fraud, but what kind of standards do they have at DHS for hiring? Don’t they do background checks like every other business I have ever worked for (and I haven’t even worked for the government)?

    1. Just a side note, she wasn’t hired after she got the warrant. She was hired before she even got in trouble, but to stay in their employ with a warrant seems a bit ridiculous to me…

  11. A great example of too much complexity in government. One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing. But it leaves me wondering how in the hell I got pulled over in Indiana for a warrant on a speeding ticket in Oklahoma a year earlier. I didn’t bother to pay the ticket because I never planned on going back to that god forsaken shit hole. But as it turned out that didn’t matter much. Thanks again government.

  12. Hey I’m entitled to my opinion as caustic as it is. In my defense (not that I really need to give one) the whole story is pretty messed up. But it’s also way off topic and there’s nothing I can do about it now so I won’t bore anybody with the details. So we will just have to agree to disagree. I will give you this though, Oklahoma isn’t the worst place I’ve been to, not by a long shot. And while we’re at it, if you want to improve the appeal of your home you might look into ways to make your law enforcement officers less like robotic douche-bags and more like human beings.

  13. Anon @ 9: Um, no one.

    Wasn’t the ability to communicate better to one another the justification used to unite so many government agencies under the single umbrella to begin with? Looks like we’ve been sold yet another bill of goods.

  14. The original driving purpose behind the DHS was to facilitate the cooperation of enforcement agencies so that warning signs, intelligence, and enforcement were not chaotically used and were not allowing obvious problems to fall through the cracks.

    Preventing this sort of abject embarrassment is precisely what was used to sell people on the genesis of that agency.

    I suppose they have completely forgotten about that now and are more interested in being just another pushy law enforcement agency that doesn’t play nice with others.

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