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Disbarred Kentucky lawyer Eric Conn to throw in the towel on escape charges

Lexington Herald-Leader - 5/15/2018

May 15--Former Eastern Kentucky disability attorney Eric C. Conn plans to plead guilty to charges that he escaped to Central America before he was to be sentenced in a massive fraud case.

Conn's attorney, Willis G. Coffey, filed a motion seeking a hearing for Conn to be rearraigned, meaning to change his initial plea of not guilty to guilty.

U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves scheduled the hearing for May 25 in Lexington.

The motion said Conn would plead guilty to all four charges against him -- escape, two conspiracy charges and failure to appear at his sentencing. The charges carry top sentences of five years.

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Conn, 58, admitted last year that he put false evidence of clients' physical or mental disabilities in hundreds of cases, paid medical professionals to rubber-stamp claims, and bribed a Social Security judge to approve them.

He was placed on home detention with electronic monitoring while awaiting sentencing, but cut off his ankle monitor on June 2 and fled to Mexico, then eventually made his way to Honduras.

Police arrested him there in early December at a Pizza Hut restaurant and returned him to Kentucky.

A former employee of Conn's, Curtis Wyatt, pleaded guilty to helping him escape.

Conn also faces 18 charges in connection with the original fraud case.

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