Eideard

Rebecca Parrett may have seemed like a typical retired expatriate in the small resort town of Ajijic, Jalisco, in central-western Mexico. But, Parrett, a fugitive of two and a half years, was living under a made-up identity, escaping U.S. officials and a 25-year prison sentence.

Parrett fled in March 2008 after a jury in Columbus, Ohio, convicted her of charges including securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy in a $1.9 billion corporate fraud case…

Parrett was the only person to flee her conviction despite being a co-defendant with her former husband, Donald Ayers, and several other executives of a company she co-founded, National Century Financial Enterprises, in Columbus.

National Century was supposed to pay medical companies for future insurance bills and claims to be re-sold as bonds. But the company eventually became a giant Ponzi-like scheme, officials said…

Parrett described herself as an innocent woman from West Virginia without a college degree who worked her way up to become a medical billing executive.

“It’s very sad to be the victim of a political bureaucracy that has abused its power beyond imagination over and over again,” she wrote in the preface. “There were many victims. I am only one small dot on a giant map that the government controls…”

She can start her own Tea Party chapter in the slammer.

Parrett told people she had testified in a fraud case in the United States and was living in Mexico for her safety.

Joseph Scott, a former defense lawyer in Ohio for Parrett and her sister, Linda Case, described Parrett as “definitely successful” at several business endeavors before her career began at National Century.

“She was a very hard-working woman,” Scott said. “She put in a lot of hours and stayed up to date with modern technology. She was not afraid of a challenge.”

Probably will work her way up to supervisor of the prison laundry.