Escapee Nabbed In Coffeehouse

Sat., Jan. 9, 1999

By Bill Morlin billm@spokesman.com

A Spokane man who escaped from a federal prison in Oregon was arrested Friday with his wife at a coffeehouse in Vancouver, B.C., authorities reported.

Timothy W. Ehrmantrout, 35, also known as Dallas Crockett, now faces escape charges in Portland.

His wife, Jodie Lee Crockett of Spokane, is charged with concealing an escaped prisoner and being an accessory in the escape.

Dave Brown, chief of the U.S. Marshals Service fugitive team in Portland, said the escapee and his wife were tracked to Mexico and England.

Authorities, however, couldn’t catch up with the couple until they returned to North America, taking up residence in Canada.

Acting on a tip from the Marshals Service, Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested the pair in Vancouver without incident at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Brown said.

The couple is being held in Canada, awaiting extradition to the United States. That process could take several days.

Ehrmantrout had been sought since fleeing an honor farm at the Federal Correctional Institution at Sheridan, Ore., on Nov. 14.

He was serving a 14-month sentence for violating his federal probation for a mail and bank fraud conviction in Montana.

A judge decided that violation occurred after Ehrmantrout was involved in a suspected fraud scheme that caught the attention of the FBI.

Ehrmantrout, known in Spokane as Dallas Crockett, raised more than $200,000 from investors in Spokane early last year.

He claimed his company, CompuSHOP, had developed a way to dramatically speed up data transfer over the Internet.

He told prospective investors in Spokane that he was friends with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and media mogul Ted Turner.

He also boasted that he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ehrmantrout returned to Spokane after being convicted in Montana of federal fraud charges. He posed as a lawyer in Helena and bilked a client and an office equipment business out of $37,000, authorities said.

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