Bounty Hunter sentenced to 10 years in prison for kidnapping woman

A bounty hunter convicted of kidnapping a woman from her Missouri home and trying to take her to Louisiana was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison, prosecutors said.

Judge Ronnie L. White of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis sentenced the man, Wayne D. Lozier Jr., 45, of the New Orleans area, after a jury found Mr. Lozier guilty in September . kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

According to an indictment in the case, on May 9, 2019, Mr. Lozier and his partner, Jody L. Sullivan, traveled to St. Peters, Missouri, to illegally remove a woman, who was not publicly identified, from her home. and take her to Louisiana. Mr. Lozier and Ms. Sullivan were hired by a Louisiana bail bonds company to find and arrest the woman, but they were not licensed by the state of Missouri to work as bail bondsmen, prosecutors said.

According to prosecutors, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana has issued a warrant for the woman's arrest on two misdemeanor charges.

Bounty hunters, sometimes called bail enforcement officers, can work in certain states as long as they are licensed within that state.

Mr. Lozier told the woman he did not need permission to enter her home and handcuffed the woman in her basement, according to the complaint. Mr. Lozier and Ms. Sullivan then kidnapped the woman and took her in an SUV, prosecutors said.

The woman called police from her phone, and a police officer told Mr. Lozier over the phone to bring the woman back, prosecutors said.

After stopping at a gas station in Missouri, the woman asked store employees for help after learning that Mr. Lozier and Ms. Sullivan were not police officers, prosecutors said. Mr. Lozier responded by shocking the woman several times with a Taser and pulling her hair, prosecutors said.

After seeing this, someone at the gas station called the police, who responded. Mr. Lozier told them he was a bail bondsman and, according to prosecutors, was licensed by the state of Louisiana.

Police did not know at the time that Mr. Lozier and Ms. Sullivan had kidnapped the woman earlier in the day, prosecutors said. When they were back in the SUV, Mr. Lozier threatened to hit the woman and told her she would never see her children again, prosecutors said.

Ultimately, prosecutors said, Mr. Lozier dropped the woman off at a detention center in Mississippi instead of taking her to Louisiana because he was concerned about legal trouble.

Sayler A. Fleming, a U.S. attorney, said in a statement that Wednesday's sentencing “should reinforce the need for those who work in the fugitive recovery industry to comply with state and local laws and regulations and those they serve detention should be treated with decency.”

“They work in a dangerous industry, but that's not a license to go rogue,” she said.

Tyler K. Morgan, an attorney for Mr. Lozier, said in an email that he was “disappointed in today's outcome.”

“This was a licensing issue that should have been resolved in state court,” he said. “Now the battle continues on appeal.”

Ms. Sullivan, 56, of the New Orleans area, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and kidnapping and was sentenced in December to five years of probation, the Justice Department said. An attorney for Ms. Sullivan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Jay Greenberg, a special agent in charge of the FBI's St. Louis division, said in a statement that Mr. Lozier “claimed he was just doing his job as a bounty hunter, but a jury convicted him of kidnapping.”

“The evidence presented at trial proved that he blatantly ignored police warnings that he was breaking the law, as well as police orders to release his victim,” he said.