Orson Mozes’ Victims to Receive Partial Compensation

On Monday July 25, 2011, 59 families will receive portions of $167,000  based on percentages of the total that each family lost “almost two years after Judge George Eskin ordered the distribution.”

Orson was convicted of seventeen counts of theft and was sentenced in July 2009 to three years and four months in prison.

“He had been arrested for using a fake name in Miami, Florida, after being featured on the television show America’s Most Wanted. At the time of his arrest, he had roughly $300,000 with him, though it’s estimated he stole roughly $800,000 from 59 families.

After Mozes was sentenced, his ex-wife, Christen Brown, made a play for that cash, claiming she needed it in past child and spousal support. But prosecutor Paula Waldman argued that money should rightly go as restitution to Mozes’s victims. Eskin ultimately agreed with Waldman, and ordered the money distributed.

Brown appealed that decision, which held up the money. The District Attorney’s Office had already distributed about half of the $300,000 at that time, while the other half was in a bank account. Brown lost her case at the Court of Appeals, and the California Supreme Court declined to hear her the matter, exhausting her case and freeing up the money to go to the victims. “Christen Brown has no ability to get that money,” Waldman said.

“Mozes, who ran an international adoption agency out of Montecito called Adoption International Program, would string families along, promising them children he couldn’t provide, all the while asking for more money to make it possible. Families eventually realized they were being scammed, and approached the DA’s Office to look into the situation.”

A federal lawsuit against Mozes and Brown filed on behalf of some of the victims is still pending.
Money Back for Adoption Scam Victims
[The Santa Barbara Independent 7/23/11 by Chris Meagher]

For more on Orson Mozes, see the PoundPup Legacy files.

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