BALTIMORE, April 10 (UPI) -- The lawyer for a British national who assumed the identity of a deceased U.S. Senate aide says his client didn't do it to rip anyone off.
John Skelton was sentenced to time served by a Maryland federal judge last month and sent packing on the next flight out of Baltimore to Great Britain.
The Baltimore Sun said Sunday the sentence was agreeable to both prosecutors and Skelton's attorney, who said this week his client did not use his alter ego for financial gain.
"This wasn't a situation where he intruded upon someone else's ongoing life and caused the kinds of problems that often accompany the use of someone's identity," said Joseph Evans, a federal public defender.
Evans said Skelton assumed the identity of Kurt Branham, a legislative aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who died in 1995 at the age of 28. Skelton wanted to stay in the United States in order to access medical treatments for HIV that were not available in Britain at the time.
Skelton lived as Branham for 16 years, but never used his false identity to open bank accounts or obtain a credit card, the newspaper said.
