Ukrainian, 23, who lied his way into high school denied bail
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A 23-year-old Ukrainian man accused of faking his name and age while attending a Pennsylvania high school and having sex with an underage girl was denied lower bail during a brief hearing Tuesday.
Prosecutors also dropped identity theft and conspiracy charges against Artur Samarin, leaving in place charges of unsworn falsification, statutory sexual assault, corruption of minors, theft and tampering with public records.
Dauphin County prosecutor Fran Chardo said the criminal allegations in the identity theft and conspiracy counts are covered in other charges against Samarin. Under Pennsylvania law, Chardo said, Samarin wouldn't get more criminal penalties if convicted of those charges along with identity theft and conspiracy.
"If we can avoid having an unnecessary hearing by dropping a duplicative charge, we'll do that every time," Chardo said afterward.
Samarin waived the preliminary hearing as part of an agreement in which prosecutors said they will not charge him, at least for now, with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse. Samarin's attorneys said that crime, which involves oral sex, carries substantially greater criminal penalties than statutory sexual assault.
Samarin, who called himself Asher Potts, is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl.
He had impressed teachers and community leaders while attending John Harris High School in Harrisburg and had been accepted into a college in Florida before authorities concluded he was considerably older and a Ukrainian citizen who overstayed a student work visa.
Defense attorney Clarke Madden argued that bail, now at $240,000, should be lowered, allowing Samarin to be transferred from the Dauphin County Prison to a federal immigration lockup in York.
Samarin has no criminal record and had no disciplinary problems at John Harris High, Madden said.
"There aren't any facts here that would justify bail of nearly a quarter-million dollars," the lawyer told Dauphin County Judge Deborah Curcillo.
Chardo told the judge that federal immigration authorities had not placed a formal detainer on Samarin but rather a request to be notified if he was about to make bail. The judge denied the bail reduction motion.
Samarin said before a hearing last month that he was just seeking a better life.
One aspect of the case that has drawn the attention of investigators is the role played by Michael and Stephayne Potts, with whom he lived for much of the past four years before moving in months ago with another family.
Samarin told Harrisburg station WHTM-TV last week in a call from jail that his family pooled money to send him to the U.S. "for a better life." After his visa expired, he said, the Pottses helped him obtain a birth certificate and a fake Social Security card in the name of Asher Potts.
He accused the couple of using his illegal immigration status as leverage to pressure him into doing work for them.
"Everything they ask of me, I could not tell them no," he told the station.
Court records say the couple "conspired with" Samarin in faking his way through high school, but they have not been charged.
Their lawyer, Corky Goldstein, said Thursday it was the Pottses who first alerted authorities about Samarin by contacting the FBI months ago. Goldstein would not say what motivated the couple to contact authorities. They deny his claim he was pressured to work for them.
"She thought she was helping a young man who was being persecuted in his country, the Ukraine, by the Russians," Goldstein said. "They opened up their home to him."
Goldstein said that they thought Samarin was younger than he is and that they did not know he was having sex with the 15-year-old girl.
"When all this broke, and it came out that he was really the age that he was, they were somewhat shocked to put it lightly," Goldstein told CBS Harrisburg affiliate WHP-TV.