Alleged con artist to stand trial two decades after the crime

Four months after that authorization, hospital officials were shocked to learn that the account McAfee set up contained just $11, according to court documents. And McAfee, who was supposedly dealing with a family emergency in Illinois, was nowhere to be found.

Barry Weiss, the hospital's executive director, later learned that McAfee, operating under an assumed identity, had allegedly converted the hospital's money to bearer bonds and fled the country, authorities said.

On Monday afternoon, more than 21 years after being indicted in absence for bilking College Hospital out of $1.6 million, McAfee appeared in federal court in downtown Los Angeles to face the charges.

"They say we always get our man," said FBI Agent Scott Schofield, who was 10 years old when McAfee allegedly absconded with the money. "This one just took a little while."

Schofield and another agent flew to Thailand to retrieve McAfee, whom authorities said had been living there for years under yet another name.

According to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, as well as interviews with authorities, McAfee began making preparations to rip off College Hospital before he was even hired.

In August 1985, while working for a company called Hospital Home Care, he stole the identity of a man named David Nathan Ward of Van Nuys, prosecutors allege. A month later he applied for the comptroller job and got it.

Several months after he started working at the hospital, McAfee obtained a Colorado driver's license and a U.S. passport bearing Ward's name and his own photo, according to court papers.

In the meantime, he'd contacted a PaineWebber broker in Mission Viejo and told him he would soon be coming into a substantial amount of money, court records show.

In July 1986, he transferred $1.3 million to a PaineWebber account in the name of a bogus company, telling the broker he was president of the firm, authorities allege. A month later, McAfee allegedly arranged for the transfer of $300,000 to another account and had lunch with the broker, telling him he was thinking about buying a hospital in Lucerne, Switzerland, according to the indictment.