ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 23, 1997 TAG: 9702240102
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.
SOURCE: The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
THE PROSECUTION is the largest ever brought nationally under the Child Support Recovery Act of 1992.
The so-called ``king of the deadbeat dads'' was ordered to pay a record-setting $4 million for back alimony and child support in West Palm Beach on Friday, then he was jailed.
U.S. Magistrate Ann Vitunac ordered Abraham ``Avi'' Brand, 51, the father of three children, to pay $4,050,000 and sentenced him to the 169 days he already has spent in federal custody.
But Brand never made it out of prison. He was immediately put into state custody at the Broward County Jail because of previous contempt findings. He might be able to get out, but only by putting up a $1.3 million bond - money he doesn't have, his lawyer says - to get a hearing.
Brand's prosecution is the largest ever brought nationally under the Child Support Recovery Act of 1992, federal prosecutors said. The act authorizes the FBI to help track down deadbeat parents.
Prosecutors said Brand netted over $2 million from real-estate deals and hid the money in banks in the Cayman Islands. His ex-wife and children, meanwhile, were reduced to living off food stamps.
Friday's sentencing in a federal courtroom followed a two-day trial in September.
Afterward Vitunac ruled Brand had willfully failed to pay child support since his December 1992 divorce from Margrethe Brand, said prosecutor Jeffrey Levenson. Brand now lives in Boca Raton with the couple's three children, ages 13, 15 and 16.
``He's never voluntarily paid a dime since 1992,'' said Michael Carbo, the ex-wife's lawyer. He said his client does not wish to see Brand jailed, but ``wants him to fulfill his legal obligations.''
At one point, under threat of contempt, Brand paid $10,000, but has not made any payments since then, Carbo said.
Carbo said Brand ``holds the keys to his own cell,'' because he will be released when he pays the restitution Vitunac ordered.
Brand, formerly of Fort Lauderdale, once had a medical supply business valued at $8.2 million, a nine-bedroom home in Sands Point on Long Island in New York, and, more recently, a place in Manhattan's Trump Tower.
After his divorce, prosecutors said, Brand fled Florida to New York, then to Walnutport, Pa., where he was picked up last April for running a red light and subsequently identified as an FBI fugitive.
Brand's lawyer, David Bogenschutz, said he will appeal Vitunac's ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Bogenschutz said he and Vitunac disagree about how to interpret the divorce judge's Dec. 18, 1992, decree that Brand pay $3.9 million to support his ex-wife ``and to provide security for the minor children,'' plus child support of $2,500 a month.
The magistrate rolled both numbers into the restitution sentence. But according to Bogenschutz, Brand is responsible only for $2,500 a month until the children reach 18.
Bogenschutz said Brand, ``hit with all these numbers, didn't know how to deal with it. He didn't know what to do.''
LENGTH: Medium: 64 linesby CNB