Illinois Man Pleads Guilty to Failing to Pay more than $50,000 in Child Support
BOISE – Rusty D. Haile, 47, of Keens, Illinois, pleaded guilty today in United States District Court in Boise to felony willful failure to pay a court-ordered child support obligation, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced.
According to the plea agreement, Haile owed $59,213.35 in back child support when he was charged in January 2006, after he left the United States to work in Bermuda. In 2000, an Alaska state court first ordered Haile to make monthly child support payments of $1,277.36 for his four minor children. After the children moved with their mother to Idaho in August 2000 and one of the children became an adult, an Ada County court reduced the monthly support payment to $1,129.91. Although he worked in several different states and sold assets or obtained employment severance of more than $46,000, Haile made few payments through 2003 and no voluntary payments between September 2003 and December 2005. Haile was arrested in March 2011 in Atlanta upon his return to the United States from Bermuda. According to the plea agreement, Haile currently owes $116,727.20 in unpaid child support. As part of the plea agreement, he will pay $30,000 in back child support on or before the date of sentencing.
The Child Support Recovery Act makes it unlawful to willfully fail to pay a court-ordered child support obligation for children living in a different state where the support obligation is more than $5,000 or has remained unpaid for more than a year. Violation of the Child Support Recovery Act is a felony where the unpaid support obligation is more than $10,000 or has remained unpaid for more than two years. The felony charge is punishable by up to two years in prison, a maximum fine of $250,00, and up to one year of supervised release. In addition, the Child Support Recovery Act requires defendants to pay restitution equal to the full amount of the unpaid child support obligation as of the sentencing date.
Sentencing is set for February 21, 2012, before Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill at the federal courthouse in Boise.
The case was investigated by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General.