What names do you associate with Interpol’s wanted criminal list? El Chapo? Osama Bin Laden? Pablo Escobar? The list of infamy goes on and on.
One name a little closer to home than downtown Medellín or the mountains of Afghanistan is Dr Timothy Molteno.
Currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Otago’s Physics Department, Molteno was once regarded as an internationally wanted fugitive, although his situation is far less clear-cut than almost all of the criminals he once shared the list with.
Having pleaded guilty in New Zealand to unlawfully interfering with data and deleting data without authority, Molteno was sentenced to reparations of $11,840 and 200 hours of community service. After this, he expected the ordeal to be finished.
Although the case was heard by a New Zealand court, it was done so on behalf of the US, the jurisdiction where the criminal activity took place.
Despite having a New Zealand passport, to be able to travel to Australia following any criminal convictions, one must apply for a visa. In Molteno’s case, that visa was immediately declined.
An Australian official rang him soon after to ask whether he had “knowledge of any active arrest warrants?” Molteno was puzzled; unaware of the problem he was about to dig up. It was not until he searched Interpol that he found his mugshot and the charges he was internationally wanted for; the charges were identical to the previous charges he had already stood trial for in NZ some years earlier.
Upon finding out that this whole saga was set to continue indefinitely, and despite having already served the entirety of his sentence, Molteno carried on in a remarkably stoic manner.
He was “convinced it was just a bizarre clerical error, but who’s going to undo it? To undo it you have to go through a bureaucratic nightmare.”
With Interpol lacking any customer service department, and politicians and New Zealand police alike lacking the authority to make a change to Interpol’s database, Molteno was stuck in legal limbo.
“Someone will eventually push the ‘undo’ button,” he hoped, “but until that point happens, trying to force a change is simply impossible.”
Eventually, Molteno got a package in the post from the FBI telling him to contact the Oregon public defenders office. Once he did that, a lawyer named Bryan Lessley, who ultimately brought this nightmare to an end, was assigned to his case.
“I was very surprised because it’s a similar situation to a duty solicitor [public defender] here. How could you be so motivated in that position?”
Molteno had very few conversations with Lessley over the period he was represented by the public defender. “I didn’t hear from him for months, almost six months at a time, and sometimes I thought it must just be over.” It wasn’t, but Molteno noticed that Lessley “was very switched on.”
Ultimately, Molteno received a message from Lessley telling him it was finally over and to wish him all the best for the future.
Looking back on the test he faced, Molteno speaks about that period as if the ordeal of a close friend rather than his own.
When asked how much it has affected his life, his response is simple, yet surprising: “In some ways it has actually helped me. It allowed me to just focus on who I am and what I enjoy doing. That’s the most important thing to me.”