Fugitive Kentucky lawyer Eric Conn captured in Honduras after six months on the lam

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- A Honduras newspaper is reporting that fugitive lawyer Eric Conn has been captured six months after he disappeared from Lexington facing 12 years in prison.

El Pais reported on its website Monday night that Conn, the flamboyant attorney who called himself "Mr. Social Security," was apprehended by a national police SWAT team.

The story includes a photograph of Conn in custody surrounded by masked law enforcement agents.

The newspaper in Tegucigalpa reported at about 5:30 p.m. EST that Conn had just been caught by the Honduran Technical Criminal Investigation Agency.

The story said that with the cooperation of the FBI, Conn would be deported to the U.S. on Tuesday.

Another newspaper, El Heraldo, reported that he was seized as he was leaving a restaurant in the northern Honduras city of La Ceiba by agents who had been following him for several weeks.

An FBI receptionist said she couldn't confirm or deny the arrest and referred questions to spokesman David Habich, who declined to comment.

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Conn's lawyer, Scott White of Lexington, said in an email Monday night that "it does appear from the reporting that Eric was taken into custody by some uniformed group in Honduras. But, given the security situation in Honduras and the dangerous gangs operating there as has been reported as recently as the last few weeks in relation to its election, then who knows who these masked folks are, for whom they work, or if Eric has even been lawfully seized. Those may or may not be issues for either our courts or the Honduran courts.

"If in fact Eric has been lawfully captured and is legally returned, then, as I told you in June, this comes as no surprise ... the FBI usually gets their man.”

When he disappeared June 2, Conn faced a dozen years behind bars for his role in a scheme that defrauded the Social Security Administration of $550 million. His electronic ankle monitoring device was found in a backpack on Interstate 75 in Lexington.

The FBI said in July that Conn had been spotted in July at a gas station and a Walmart store in New Mexico, and that he fled using a truck owned and registered by an unnamed co-conspirator to a dummy company in Montana. He wasn't believed to have crossed the border into Mexico.

The FBI offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and seized bank accounts which could be used to support his flight.

Federal and state agencies in June executed a search of Conn’s office in Floyd County and of his mother’s home and car. Special Agent in Charge Amy Hess said at the time that friends, associates and relatives of Conn were likely to be charged with aiding his escape.

The lawyer on the run was sentenced in absentia in July and ordered to pay nearly $170 million in restitution for theft and giving gratuities to a public official – a judge – in a scheme to rig disability hearings for Conn’s clients.

Conn built the third-largest disability practice in the U.S. by plastering his face on billboards across Eastern Kentucky and promoted his business at events using a team of young women he called "Conn's Hotties."

He pleaded guilty to conspiring with a former administrative law judge and a psychologist to enrich themselves by winning disability payments for Conn’s clients regardless of whether they were entitled to benefits.

He also admitted to taking $5.7 million in fraudulently obtained fees and paying off the judge.