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CACHE COUNTY -- Police say an Idaho journalist who formerly worked at a Utah paper spent three days in the Cache County Jail after he was mistaken for a fugitive in a Nevada drug trafficking case.

Jay Patrick, 36, came to Logan on March 30 to pay a fine he owed for fishing without a license in Cache County.

I just said, ‘This can't be, this is a mistake.' –Jay Patrick

"The booking officer came over and informed me that I was wanted out of Nevada," he said. "Not only was I wanted, but I was on their Top 10 Most Wanted list for meth trafficking."

Patrick, who says he was stunned, was arrested and booked into jail.

"I just said, ‘This can't be, this is a mistake,'" he said.

Patrick, who had worked for the Logan Herald Journal, contacted his former boss from jail. The paper was able to provide time cards and articles he wrote on the very days he was allegedly breaking the law in Mesquite.

"(My lawyer) said, ‘This kid had to be doing a lot of meth to drive from Logan to Mesquite and then come back and write three stories a day," Patrick said. "That would have been a trick."

Patrick was released from jail on Friday, April 1.

He says this wasn't just a case of two people with the same name -- his picture was even on Nevada's 10 most wanted fugitives. But authorities there won't tell him why.

Patrick, who now lives in Boise, plans put in public records requests to get to the bottom of it.

Email: mrichards@ksl.com

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