Theft Suspect for 8 Years Goes Fishing, Gets Hooked

A former civilian employee accused of stealing more than $1 million from the Navy in 1981 was arrested while fishing at a lake 25 miles east of Fresno, authorities said Tuesday.

Hollie Wayne Carter, 60, had been the subject of an eight-year manhunt after allegedly walking away from his job at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme with 17 blank Treasury checks, said Gary Auer, the FBI agent in charge of the Ventura office.

He was charged in 1982 with theft of government property after allegedly cashing 12 checks for a total of $1,030,000 at the base’s credit union. The remaining five checks haven’t surfaced, Auer said.

Where Carter went after leaving his wife and stepdaughter in Camarillo is unknown.

However, he told Fresno County sheriff’s deputies that he had spent the last four years caring for an invalid on a local ranch, according to Sheriff’s Department spokesman Robert Hagler.

An area resident called the sheriff after spotting Carter’s picture on an FBI poster at a rural post office, Hagler said. The resident steered officers last Friday to Carter’s favorite fishing spot on the shores of Pine Flat Lake.

“The deputy showed him the poster and Carter said, ‘Handsome devil, isn’t he?,’ ” said Hagler.

Carter produced a California driver’s license issued to a Don Wilson, but the deputy saw similarities in the fingerprints on the license and those on the poster, Hagler said.

Carter then gave the two fish he had caught to a fellow angler and was taken to Fresno County Jail, where he was held without bail pending arraignment at U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

“He told the deputies that he worried every day about being arrested,” Hagler said.

Carter served in the Navy from 1945 to 1964. He became a civilian employee in 1971, working at the U.S. Navy Finance Center in Cleveland before signing on in 1976 as a disbursing officer for the Navy Personnel Support Activity Detachment in Port Hueneme.

If convicted, he faces a 10-year prison term and a $10,000 fine.