SEATTLE, May 29 (UPI) -- Seattle's "Barefoot Bandit" should forfeit any profits from his story, prosecutors said in an indictment that also charged him with an additional bank burglary.
Colton Harris-Moore, 20, the so-called Barefoot Bandit suspected in hundreds of thefts of cars, boats and light aircraft in the Pacific Northwest, was charged this week with the additional crime of a September 2009 bank burglary on Orcas Island, Wash., The Seattle Times reported Friday.
In the same indictment filed this week in U.S. District Court in Seattle, prosecutors said Harris-Moore should be ordered to forfeit "any profits or proceeds received in connection with any publication or dissemination of information" related to his alleged crime spree, the newspaper said.
In April 2008 Harris-Moore escaped from a Renton halfway house and eluded police for nearly two years while committing a series of crimes in Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, prosecutors say. He was captured after he stole a plane in Indiana and crash-landed it in the Bahamas.
One of his attorneys, John Henry Browne, said Friday Harris-Moore wants to use any proceeds from movie and book deals to pay the $1.3 million prosecutors estimate he owes in restitution, with anything extra going to charity.
Prosecutors consider his story to be "intellectual property," and Assistant U.S. Attorney Darwin Roberts told the Times he views the forfeiture language in the indictment "as proper and consistent with applicable law."
Prosecutors are making progress toward a plea bargain, Roberts said. Harris-Moore faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
