Colorado Caught Themselves A Celebrity - The Plot Thickens - Whose Next?

[Lisa Karres]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/07/AR2007090703047_2.html?sid=ST2007092000890

Hsu Steered Major Fundraiser to Obama
Hsu skipped a court hearing this week before being arrested Thursday night and forfeited $2 million in bail.

He was finally taken into custody by the FBI on Thursday night at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., authorities said.

Norman Hsu, right, in California recently with attorney Somnath Raj Chatterjee, left. (By Paul Sakuma -- Associated Press)

After failing to show up for a routine bail hearing Wednesday, San Mateo County Superior Court Judge H. James Ellis revoked Hsu's bail and issued a warrant for his arrest.

A person close to Hsu's family, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the pending criminal case, said multiple communications that Hsu made in recent days raised concerns about his safety, including fears about possible suicide. "There were some serious concerns," the source said.

Hsu's criminal attorney, who has not spoken publicly about his client since Wednesday, said he had no idea where he had gone. In the ensuing days, Hsu sent repeated communications to relatives signaling that he was contemplating suicide.

Hsu emerged on Thursday morning, boarding Amtrak's California Zephyr in Emeryville, Calif., bound for Chicago.

About 11 a.m., as the train approached Grand Junction, the engineer radioed a dispatcher that a passenger had fallen on the train and would need medical attention, possibly including a backboard, local fire officials said. That passenger was Hsu.

He hobbled off the train at the Grand Junction station 15 minutes later and was taken by ambulance to St. Mary's Hospital, where he remains in fair condition.

Local police officials said they were called late in the day by the FBI to help them secure Hsu and place him under arrest in his hospital bed. Agents are waiting for Hsu's condition to improve, at which point he will be brought before a federal magistrate and ordered transferred back to California, according to Joseph Schadler, an FBI spokesman in San Francisco.

Once he is back before a San Mateo County judge, state prosecutors said yesterday, they plan to resume the 15-year-old felony grand theft case against Hsu, and will ask to have him held without bail. He pleaded no contest to those charges in 1992.

Hsu's guilty plea had left him facing a possible sentence of up to three years and a demand he pay full restitution to the two dozen victims, according to Gareth S. Lacy, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office.

Gorenberg said he is worried about Hsu. "Despite it all, I still love the guy," he said. "Despite everything you read, every experience I ever had with him was nothing but delightful, and I just scratch my head."

[WTPUSA]

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