The UAE deported convicted scam artist Fatemah Angela Harkness to the US where she is wanted in connection with a $1 million (Dh3.67 million) embezzlement case, a US marshal official told XPRESS in an interview late last night.
The 27-year-old was arrested on Easter Sunday immediately after her arrival at New York's JFK airport from Dubai.
She has been in the UAE since 2005 following which she was arrested by officials in Dubai who had worked with the United States Marshals, Interpol and the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force in their international quest to apprehend her, Hector Gomez, the supervisory deputy US marshal in Austin, Texas, said.
The Interpol department at the Ministry of the Interior in Abu Dhabi confirmed there was a ‘red notice', a global request for arrest, against Harkness, who had an Iranian passport.
"Even when there is no treaty, criminals wanted by Interpol are routinely extradited," said a senior Interpol officer who did not want to be named. "We cannot let Dubai become the hub for such people."
Gomez described Harkness as an "extremely cunning, extremely smart" woman. He also said he was relieved the three-year hunt for her was over.
The US authorities could not demand her return from the UAE because the latter does not have an extradition agreement with the US. The big break came for Gomez when, it appears, Harkness had had enough.
"She called me two weeks ago and said she wanted to come home, to surrender," Gomez said.
Since touching down on American soil on April 8, Harkness has been held by authorities and is awaiting transport to Austin, Texas within the next 10 days.
Harkness, a former strip club dancer, and Gary Jones, a vice president of a Wells Fargo branch, conspired to embezzle more than $1 million between 2000 and 2003, to fund Angela's Motorsports, a racing team that emerged on to the Nascar scene in 2002.
Jones pleaded guilty to fraud, theft and embezzlement charges, and is currently serving his sentence, but Harkness fled.
A warrant was issued for her arrest, and the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, led by the US Marshals in Austin, took the case. The trail went cold in late summer 2004, and in October deputies turned to an old-fashioned investigative technique: searching garbage.
It was while rummaging through a trash can at Harkness' sister's Texas residence that they stumbled upon a letter addressed to the UAE embassy in Washington that used Harkness' maiden name, Karimkhani.
"Harkness, with her four-year-old daughter in tow, was trying to make a new life in Dubai, working as a beautician," Gomez said.
The US marshals placed all the information in an Interpol ‘red notice'. A few months later she was arrested in Dubai.
Harkness will appear before a US federal court for sentencing to answer to a guilty plea on fraud charges she entered in April 2004. She faces up to five years' imprisonment in a federal jail.
Gomez didn't dismiss notions that Harkness could write a gripping novel in jail and sell her story to the film industry.
"All made-for-TV movies need to have a good ending," Gomez said.
