GUILTY UK - Charlie Stopford, a.k.a. Lord Buckingham, revealed as missing American

At the time of his arrest, police said, he had been working as an information technology security consultant in Switzerland

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Puca said:

Think about this Amraann! Twenty years ago this man was accused, but not proven to having tried to blow up his boss's car. (Haven't we all had that thought!)
He than, I feel, left to go to a country that he always cared to live in, married, had children, and played a roll. I for one cannot find fault with that.

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Authorities still didn’t know who Buckingham was in November 2005, when he was sentenced to 21 months in prison for lying to obtain a passport. Nor did they know two months later, when he won an appeal that reduced his prison sentence to time served and commended him to the custody of British immigration officials.

Though the press had by then begun chasing clues all over Europe, Buckingham might have remained a cipher indefinitely had his past not intervened. On May 3, 2006, Buckingham’s daughter, Lyndsey, then 19, received an e-mail from a man named Kevin Stopford. The subject line read, “Your father I know him.” Attached was a family photograph showing a younger version of her father, blond and tan, surrounded by brothers and sisters. Stopford directed another e-mail to Sprigg’s unit: “The person who claims to be ‘Christopher Edward Buckingham,’” he wrote, “is known to me as Charles Albert Stopford... I would suggest sending his fingerprints to the United States authorities. You most assuredly will obtain a match”...

I must admit I was surprised to find him in Zurich a year later. I’d thought he was destined to remain marooned in Florida for the rest of his days. Instead, it had taken him less than a year to reassume his fictitious identity.

This time, he was nearly legit. He had legally obtained a U.S. passport under his adopted name, and simply boarded a plane and flown to Zurich. The Swiss raised no fuss at his return.

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