The FBI and U.S. Marshals Service determined Roy McGrath is an “international flight risk” and are offering a combined $20,000 reward for information about his whereabouts.
McGrath, 53, was former Gov. Larry Hogan’s chief of staff but resigned after it was revealed he orchestrated an outsized severance package for himself from Maryland Environmental Services, a government-owned nonprofit he ran before taking a post on Hogan’s staff.
Federally indicted in October 2021, McGrath was supposed to stand trial starting March 13 on embezzlement and wire fraud charges in the U.S. District Court for Baltimore. He did not show up, prompting the presiding judge to issue a warrant for his arrest and triggering a multistate search. An FBI wanted poster for McGrath lists a possible alias as “RC Baisliadou.”
A resident of Naples, Florida, McGrath was supposed to leave for Baltimore on March 12 but apparently never got on his flight.
The local sheriff’s office did a wellness check at McGrath’a home the next day after he failed to appear in court, but he was not home. March 15, two days after McGrath disappeared, agents armed with long guns went to McGrath’s door at dawn and raided the residence. Equipped with a search warrant, they went through the house and confiscated his wife’s phone.
On March 22, a mysterious author published what purported to be a tell-all book about McGrath’s time under Hogan. However, the author’s identity could not be verified, and an attorney for McGrath’s wife told The Baltimore Sun it was possible the book originated on a computer McGrath had access to.
A former U.S. marshal, Kevin Connolly, told The Sun that for a high-profile fugitive like McGrath to evade detection for prolonged periods, it is likely they would have to flee the country.
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McGrath, a U.S. citizen, was born in Greece, and his mother was from Greece, according to public records and McGrath’s Florida marriage license. It’s not clear whether McGrath maintained Greek citizenship — an official with the Greek Consulate in Washington, D.C., declined to answer questions. McGrath did surrender his U.S. passport to authorities in Florida in 2021.
Once abroad, someone with means might be able to shop for a fake birth certificate, Connolly told The Sun. They might be able to take up residence in a place like the U.S. Virgin Islands and apply for an American passport under their assumed identity.
Connolly said Tuesday that in a high-profile case like this one, federal authorities will be putting tremendous pressure on people close to McGrath to tell them anything they know about where he went.
Connolly said investigators will give them two choices: They either can give up information about McGrath and potentially get the $20,000 reward, or they potentially could face criminal charges of being an accessory after the fact.
”And if anyone knowingly makes a false statement to a U.S. marshal or an FBI agent in this case, that’s a federal offense with up to five years’ imprisonment,” he said.
Connolly, who worked for the Marshals Service in the Washington, D.C., area and supervised the regional fugitive task force in Richmond, Virginia, for 17 years, said he was not surprised the FBI labeled McGrath an “international flight risk.”
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“A fugitive of means is more likely to go international to evade capture if he’s got the money,” he said. “If he’s foreign-born, maybe he has international contacts.”
An obituary for McGrath’s mother stated she had family in Greece.
The reality of bringing a fugitive home from abroad largely depends on what country they’ve fled to and its current government, said defense attorney and former prosecutor Andrew I. Alperstein.
In some cases, it might be prudent for a country to extradite an American-sought fugitive.
“Other countries don’t want the United States to do the same thing back to them because at some point, there will be a fugitive from that country over here that they will want,” Alperstein said.
All of it depends on the existing extradition treaties between the two countries, Alperstein said. For example, some countries do not extradite their own citizens, regardless of treaties they might have with the United States. Other countries, like Cuba, rarely, if ever, extradite fugitives.
The U.S. does have an extradition treaty, dating to 1931, with Greece.