By Jeff German

Thu, Jun 26, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Metin Atilan

A little leniency from a federal magistrate and a simple lie were all it took for an international defense contractor to elude justice in Las Vegas.

FBI agents had arrested Metin Atilan on May 27, alleging he conspired to pay a $1 million bribe to an undercover federal investigator posing as an Army contracting officer.

Prosecutors cited plenty of reasons to keep Atilan behind bars until he could be tried. The 48-year-old, who was staying at the Venetian at the time of his arrest, held both Turkish and American passports and had traveled extensively outside the country, conducting millions of dollars worth of business with the U.S. military in Iraq. The alleged bribery conspiracy had taken him to England.

In court papers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Bliss called Atilan a “serious flight risk” with few ties to the community. “There is no condition or combination of conditions that will reasonably assure defendant’s appearance in court,” Bliss argued.

But after Atilan surrendered his American passport, submitted an affidavit swearing his Turkish passport had expired and signed a stipulation agreeing to forfeit all financial interests in his company if he fled, U.S. Magistrate Lawrence Leavitt let Atilan head off to the Sunrise Mountain-area home of one of the contractor’s longtime friends.

An electronic monitoring system was supposed to ensure that Atilan could not flee, but that’s what he did June 14.

“When we seek detention, we always do it for a reason,” U.S. Attorney Greg Brower said. “It’s frustrating.”

The escape also calls into question the procedures for keeping track of these kinds of defendants.

Atilan’s friend, Theodore Williams, said Atilan tricked the person supervising him at U.S. Pretrial Services into letting him leave the house the night he fled. Pretrial Services oversees electronic monitoring for the federal courts.

Williams, a 67-year-old retired Air Force computer security specialist who first met Atilan in Turkey years ago, said his friend didn’t tell him ahead of time about the ruse. But Williams said he later learned from federal authorities that Atilan had made up a story that he was going to take Williams to the hospital. Defendants on home detention are allowed to leave occasionally with permission. Authorities keep track of them 24/7 at a central monitoring facility linked to a receiver attached to a home telephone.

In this case, Atilan left and never came back. The FBI said he cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet, which was on his wrist, late on June 14.

Williams said he reported Atilan missing to Pretrial Services when he came home about noon the next day from a Sunday morning at church.

Authorities did not appear to be in a rush to find Atilan, Williams said. He said he didn’t hear back from anyone until a week later, when an FBI agent came to interview him about the disappearance.

Patrick McDonald, one of Atilan’s attorneys, said the escape caught him by surprise too. At a meeting two days before he fled, Atilan, he said, was “adamant about defending himself” and was contemplating hiring lawyers in Dayton, Ohio, where he is charged in the bribery conspiracy.

Bliss said in her court papers that Atilan is accused of conspiring to pay the undercover investigator the $1 million kickback in return for his help in getting his company, PMA Services Ltd., a $10 million contract to supply the Army with 353 portable trailers in Iraq. Atilan had met with the undercover government investigator in London, where he paid him $30,000, and later in Las Vegas, Bliss said.

Williams said his son, who works for Atilan’s company at a U.S. military base in Turkey, may unwittingly have been part of delivering some of the $30,000 in London. His son has not been charged in the conspiracy.

In a September 2005 interview with FBI agents, Bliss wrote, Atilan claimed that his company operated on four U.S. military bases in Iraq and had $400 million in government billings, mostly for heavy equipment and construction materials.

Atilan’s whereabouts is unknown, but federal authorities and Williams have speculated he could be on his way to Iraq or Turkey, where he has a wife and other family members.

The FBI is leading the search.

“We’re interviewing people he associated with,” FBI spokesman Dave Staretz said. “We are conducting a hard-pressed fugitive investigation in an attempt to apprehend him.”

A spokeswoman for Pretrial Services in Las Vegas refused to discuss the escape. And Leavitt did not return a phone call for comment.

But Ed Bales, managing director of the Delaware-based Federal Prison Consultants, said the escape demonstrates flaws in the federal electronic monitoring program.

“Based on what happened here, they’re asking for trouble,” he said. “They need to take more precautions and put better security procedures in place.”

Bales said he’s not surprised that Pretrial Services didn’t respond quickly to Atilan’s escape.

“With a nonviolent defendant they’re not going to be rushing out the door with guns and all that stuff,” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”

Though Leavitt’s decision to place Atilan on home detention turned out to be wrong, former federal prosecutors who practice as defense lawyers in front of Leavitt said it would be unfair to criticize the magistrate.

“If Judge Leavitt released somebody over the objection of the government, there had to be awfully good reasons,” Stan Hunterton said. “Anybody who has worked in the federal system for the last 20 years or so knows that Larry Leavitt is no friend of defendants.’ ”

Charles Kelly described Leavitt, a former prosecutor, as one of the smartest and most experienced magistrates in Nevada.

“This guy’s been around the block,” Kelly said. “If he thought this was the right thing to do, I don’t think anyone is qualified to second-guess him.”

Leavitt, he explained, had to balance Atilan’s flight risk with his right to remain free while facing the charges against him.

“He makes these kinds of decisions on a daily basis,” Kelly said.