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America's Most Wanted fugitive sentenced after being on the run for 5 years

Oct 28, 2011 Matt Roesly

In Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, an alleged sex offender that was on the run for five years was sentenced to jail, Gannett reports. Fairly W. Earls, was sentenced to 45 years in prison in May 1999 on three counts of first-degree sexual assault on a six-year-old child. He was retried in 2005 and posted a $25,000 bail. However, he fled the country under a false name and passport and the country issued a warrant for his arrest in November of 2005. By January 2006, Earls twice appeared on the television show America's Most Wanted, while the U.S. Marshal Service was asked to locate him. With his fake identity, Earls had avoided authorities until August 2010 in Panama, where he was arrested and brought back to the United States. Earls will face 12 charges of bail violations and four counts of sexual assault. In 2010, there were more than 2,500 identity theft complaints in Wisconsin, 16 percent of which are attributed to government documents or benefits fraud. Since 2005, identity theft complaints have dropped approximately 0.1 percent in the United States, according to the Federal Trade Commission.