A disgraced ex-Democrat lawmaker has become an international fugitive after she was freed on charges of scamming an elderly man.
Melissa Fireside, 44, is believed to have crossed the US border into Mexico with her nine-year-old son after her former partner realized she had taken the youngster out of school without his permission last Wednesday.
The former Clackamas County Commissioner had been due to face trial in December on first-degree theft charges after she was accused of trying to scam her mother’s 83-year-old boyfriend out of $30,000.
She resigned from her role at Clackamas County after she was charged with fraud.
Officials found she was no longer living at an address given to bail officers, The Oregonian reported.
She is believed to have had a flight from Mexico to Amsterdam booked for last Thursday.
Fireside, who was only elected to the commissioner role last November, has an Austrian passport that is valid until 2032. Oregon Department of Justice spokesman Jerry Gorman says it was unclear how Fireside was able to obtain that document.
The passport enables its holder to live and move freely between all 27 member states of the European Union, meaning Fireside is not limited to staying in Austria.
She accused of posing as her mother’s boyfriend Arthur W Petrone, 83, to obtain a $21,000 bank loan and $9,000 credit card advance using a forged signature.
Melissa Fireside, pictured, is feared to have become an international fugitive after vanishing from her address a month before she’s due to stand trial on fraud charges
Fireside’s $900,000 home in Lake Oswego. It is one of the ritziest suburbs of Portland
Petrone was a retired supermarket worker of limited means living in an assisted living facility, The Oregonian reported. He died in August.
His daughter Lynn Roberts contacted police a year ago after discovering irregularities in Petrone’s bank account.
Investigators subsequently discovered evidence suggesting Fireside had created an email in Petrone’s name to try and take out a $35,000 loan.
She was turned down for that amount because of Petrone’s limited means but was still handed $21,000.
Roberts said her father was too vulnerable to agree to any such loan.
Fireside is believed to have used $29,000 of the cash she’s accused of stealing from Petrone to repay a loan to Oregon State Representative April Dobson.
The Democrat told The Oregonian that she had agreed to lend Fireside cash after being approached by the former lawmaker last summer and told that she needed ‘temporary relief for her personal business.’
Dobson said she felt pity for Fireside as a single mother and agreed to the loan without questioning it. It remains unclear why Fireside needed the cash in the first place.
Fireside is accused of using money stolen from her mother’s elderly boyfriend to pay back a loan to another lawmaker, Anna Dobson, pictured above. Dobson said she had no idea of the alleged scam
Fireside stood down from her role as Clackamas County commissioner after she was charged with fraud last year
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing on Dobson’s part.
Fireside owns a $900,000 home in Lake Oswego, an upscale Portland suburb famed as one of Oregon’s best places to live.
She had set up an LLC with the intent of selling an upscale property around the time of her arrest.
The missing lawmaker’s attorneys have refused to comment on her disappearance.
Speaking after her initial arrest, they said she was ‘entitled to the presumption of innocence.’
