March 2 (Bloomberg) -- James Colliton, a lawyer wanted by U.S. authorities for paying two underage girls for sex, is at large after being captured last week in Canada, the Manhattan district attorney's office said.
Colliton, 41, a former [tax] attorney at the New York firm Cravath Swaine & Moore, was indicted last week by a New York grand jury for crimes including second-degree rape, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Canadian police picked him up at a Grimsby, Ontario, hotel Feb. 24, and he was deported four days later. He is no longer in custody, the district attorney's office said.
"He is a fugitive,"' Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, said today in an interview. "It's unclear under what circumstances he was released. We know he is not in custody."
The district attorney's office unsealed an indictment today accusing Colliton of paying a 15-year-old girl for sex and later engaging in a sexual relationship with the girl's younger sister. The girls' mother was arrested and accused of giving Colliton access to the girls in exchange for living expenses, a district attorney's statement said, without naming the mother.
That's just charming. Details here from Bloomberg.com. (via The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog)
UPDATE: He's in custody. And for what it's worth: "Mr. Colliton's lawyer, Alan M. Abramson, called the allegations false and said his client 'never had sex of any kind with anyone under age.'"