KY man who escaped prison used dead cousin’s identity for 37 years. He’s going back.
A man who escaped prison and lived in Kentucky under the name of his dead cousin for more than three decades has been sentenced to 31 months in federal prison for scamming Social Security.
Harold Arnold, 71, pleaded guilty to fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Arnold was known as Billy Burchfield when he escaped from prison in Georgia in 1979.
He had been serving a 16-year sentence for manslaughter, police said.
According to police and court documents, Burchfield assumed the identity of his dead cousin, Harold Arnold, and moved to Laurel County.
He lived and worked uneventfully in the county for 37 years, until police in Georgia developed new information about his whereabouts and asked Sheriff John Root’s office to check on him in June 2016.
Detectives went to Arnold’s home and he agreed to be fingerprinted. The prints matched Burchfield’s, police said at the time.
Burchfield had worked under Arnold’s name from 1981 to 2009, and then applied for disability benefits under his assumed name.
He received $83,561 in benefits from October 2010 until July 2016, after he was arrested, according to a court document.
Burchfield ultimately legally changed his name and date of birth to match Arnold’s, but had used his cousin’s identity fraudulently before that, according to the court record.
U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom sentenced him on Jan. 28.
This story was originally published January 31, 2020 at 10:14 AM.
