According to Northampton resident Mary Likins, Smith was apprehended last Thursday in Petersburg, VA. Smith owes Likins more than $44 thousand in back child support payments and Likins spoke out publicly regarding her family's situation a short time ago.
Smith was located through the new hire federal computer match after he secured employment as a security guard at a construction site. His employer reported that he was a reliable and good employee.
Smith is incarcerated in Petersburg, VA city jail and was arraigned on Friday morning for extradition according to an email Likins received from Carolyn Muzzi of the Mass. DOR. He will be brought before a judge Wednesday, April 29 and will have the opportunity to waive extradition if he so chooses. Eventually he will be brought back to Massachusetts where he will receive a bail hearing. If no one steps forward and posts his bail he will remain incarcerated until trial.
From the Mass. DOR website:
Four of ten on new poster now in custody; Smith, formerly of Sandwich, owes $44,315
Department of Revenue Commissioner Navjeet K. Bal announced today that police officers in Petersburg VA arrested Gilbert Allen Smith, 44, shortly before midnight April 23.
Smith, who appeared on the Ten Most Wanted for Failure to Pay Child Support poster issued Feb. 25, was arrested at the Old Southside Regional Medical Center demolition site in Petersburg VA, where he was working as a security guard. He was taken to the Petersburg City Jail where he has been held since then without bail, and is scheduled to appear in the Petersburg General District Criminal Court on April 29 for a rendition hearing.
Smith, formerly of Sandwich, owes $44,315 in unpaid child support for a son now 16 who lives in Northampton. The Barnstable Family and Probate Court had ordered Smith to pay $80 weekly in child support, but Smith stopped making regular payments in 1995.
A new hire match conducted by the federal government’s Office of Child Support Enforcement located Smith. As a result of his employment, the data match, and the relay of that information to child support enforcement officials, a wage assignment for back child support was made and was traced back to Smith. By virtue of having been placed on the Ten Most Wanted poster, Petersburg police executed an outstanding criminal arrest warrant for Smith issued by Northampton District Court. Smith is charged with willfully neglecting or refusing to contribute reasonably to the support of his son and leaving the state without making provision to pay child support.
Smith, who had worked previously as a security guard, had been known to move frequently whenever an employer began withholding child support payments from his paychecks. Until now, Smith was believed to be living in New York, which was the state that received the initial information on Smith’s employment. Officials in New York had told Massachusetts Child Support Enforcement officials that Smith had likely fled the state.
Smith now joins Christopher John Lagos, Eric Alphe Grenier and Terry Lee Azevedo as those found on the new Ten Most Wanted poster. Each parent on the poster has left the Commonwealth and faces criminal charges carrying sentences of up to10 years in prison and a fine of $10,000. Arrest warrants have been issued and the names of each entered in the National Criminal Information Center database.
