In a statement issued Thursday, the Bureau of Immigration said Jerome Howard Feldman, 67, was nabbed February 3 while the latter was undergoing medical checkup at the Makati Medical Center.

Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan said Feldman would be deported to the US as soon as the Immigration’s board of commissioners issues the order for the suspect’s summary deportation.

Libanan said Feldman will be deported for being an undesirable and undocumented alien as the US passport that was issued to him already expired in October last year.

Libanan said he issued the mission order for Feldman’s arrest after learning that the American is wanted to stand trial before a US District Court in Florida.

“Let this serve as another warning to other fugitives from justice who are hiding in our country. The Philippines is not a sanctuary for wanted foreign criminals,” he said.

The US Embassy said Feldman was charged before the Florida court with a felony case for “knowingly and willfully executing a scheme or artifice to defraud the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Embassy officials added that Feldman has been on the wanted list of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since 1999.

It was learned that Feldman had agreed to enter into plea negotiations but instead fled and did not attend his arraignment.

The FBI said Feldman initially fled to Thailand where he stayed there for two years before moving to the Philippines in 2002.

While in the Philippines, Feldman was said to have used several aliases and even managed to acquire two British passports which he had used to travel from Manila to Singapore and back to Manila in October 2007.

At the time of his arrest, he was caught in possession of a British passport in the name of Michael Adams, which, according to the British Embassy, belonged to a native of Scotland who died in 1948.

The US Embassy also bared that Feldman, who was a licensed and practicing psychiatrist in Florida, has been associated with a website that allegedly brokers human organ transplants in the Philippines and elsewhere. – GMANews.

URL: http://www.gmanews.tv/story/148505/Immigration-agents-nab-American-fugitive-in-Makati

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