Post by HeadMarshal on Sept 15, 2016 5:42:52 GMT -5
D.O.B.: 5/25/39 (Current Age: 77)
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 200 lbs
Hair Brown
Eyes: Blue
Race: White
Sex: Male
Possible Locations: New York, Hungary
Aliases: Steven Ivan Forest, Steven Faluti, Larry Weis, Morris Bagley, Steven Forrest
Steve Forest is a fugitive featured during the 1990s on America's Most Wanted as well as on the 2003 Playing Cards set. Thanks to archives from NewsLibrary I found a couple of weeks ago, I have a full article I want to share with the forum community from 1991.
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Determined sleuthing by former upstate New York resident Alice Magro, now living in Valparaiso, helped convict Steve Forest in connection with a scam in which he bilked a half million dollars from various businesses.
But Steve Forest disappeared after his conviction, and that has become the subject of the broadcast "America's Most Wanted," scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday on WFLD-TV, Channel 32. Magro was taped to appear on the program.
Magro persisted in locating Forest and testified before a New Jersey grand jury and at his criminal trial.
Immediately after Forest, a Hungarian immigrant, was convicted of stealing between $200,000 and $500,000 this spring in a Newark, N.J., courtroom, he feigned an illness and was taken to a hospital in a neighboring county, Magro said.
While authorities were trying to arrange for a guard to be posted outside his hospital room, Magro said Forest slipped away.
"He sneaked out in his PJs and he hasn't been heard from since," Magro said.
Magro was one of several merchants who shipped goods to Forest's firm and never received payment, said Jack Breslin, publicity manager for "America's Most Wanted."
The owner of FAVIO, a company that markets men's fragrance by the same name as well as silk ties, Magro said she lost $2,500 in men's cologne she shipped to a phony company operated by Forest that turned out to be a vacant storefront.
At that time, FAVIO had been on the market for one month. Magro did a mass mailing to stores across the U.S. When she sent the shipment to Town and Campus Sportswear in West Orange, N.J., but never received payment, she visited the store, only to discover it was a tiny, unoccupied office with a chair and empty boxes inside.
Magro said she knew which New Jersey stores had ordered her product, so she called businesses within a 50-mile radius of West Orange, N.J. When one of the businesses she contacted said they sell FAVIO, she knew that was the scam business because she hadn't shipped her cologne to that address.
Forest's firm had a name similar to another legitimate business in the area. Magro went to Forest's store in Newark, N.J., and purchased some of her cologne, along with a silk tie.
Magro, 45, said the $2,500 she lost to Forest was a substantial sum at a time when her business was just getting off the ground.
"I wanted something - either my money or my goods or him in jail," said Magro, who has made Valparaiso her home for two years.
"Because of the information she (Magro) provided, Essex County (New Jersey) was able to arrest him," Breslin said.
I am unsure exactly where in New Jersey Steve Forest is wanted out of so I can't provide exact Law Enforcement contact information. Instead I would recommend you to call your local, state, or federal law enforcement office with information regarding Steve Forest's whereabouts.
Moderator Note: Also any updated news-related information can be sent to us at amwfans.com/thread/1662/website-contact-form
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Thoughts? I have no idea what happened to Alice Magro who worked so hard to get justice for her and the other business-people that Steve defrauded, but hopefully future operations for her company turned out better. After 25 years on the run with no decent leads, Steve probably fled back to Hungary. Thankfully there is an extradition treaty between the US and Hungary but I'm not sure as to which felony charges are covered under it.
