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'Lawyer-on-the-Lam' Tells Story

By William Vogeler, Esq. on February 08, 2018 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

In No Country for Old Men, a man-on-the-run holds up a beer bottle to wave himself by a sleepy guard at the Mexico border.

In Eric Conn's story about being a lawyer-on-the-lam, he used a puppy. Conn fled the U.S. after being convicted of a half-billion dollar fraud, and he thought a dog could help him get past border security.

"The little guy was not exactly Rin Tin Tin, but I thought almost everyone loves puppies," he told a hometown paper.

No Stranger to Fiction

No doubt, Conn is a character. In the good old days -- before he was apprehended -- he practiced law like nobody else.

He was the go-to guy for Social Security and disability claimants in Kentucky. He made almost $50 million in his law business, and he enjoyed showing it.

He put up a 19-foot tall statue of Abraham Lincoln -- a replica of the Lincoln Memorial -- outside his building. His television commercials -- featuring fancy cars and beautiful women -- would make Larry H. Parker cringe.

Maybe that's what caught investigators' attention -- that and the bribes he was paying to a judge. It turns out, Conn conned the government out of $550 million.

Conn: Man on the Lam

After pleading guilty last year, Conn panicked. He told the Lexington Herald-Leader he was afraid he would be molested in prison.

"What does one do when he is forced to reconcile his respect for what he knows is right and his fear of being sexually assaulted or sexually abused?" he wrote the newspaper.

He slipped across the border, then spent six months hiding. "Honestly, honestly," Conn said, "it was horrible."

He said he stashed $40,000 in a Honduras bank account, but he couldn't get the money out by the time he was arrested. He's broke now, and looking at 12 years in prison plus time for his escape.

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