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An Oklahoma sex offender was arrested after 13 years on the run, enrolled at an upstate New York college under an alias, having allegedly faked his own abduction in 2012 to avoid a second criminal case, according to state and federal officials. Anthony Lennon, one of Oklahoma's "Ten Most Wanted," was arrested in New York last week after 13 years on the run from authorities, according to a release from Oklahoma Attorney General Genter Drummond. Drummond thanked law enforcement for "locating and apprehending this child predator." "He evaded justice for far too long but will now face the consequences of his actions," Drummond said. Lennon, 44, was first convicted in a 2008 case involving five counts related to possession of child pornography after a friend using his computer found 50 gigabytes of child sex abuse images on the device. Court records show he entered a guilty plea in 2010 and that he was out on a suspended sentence. State records show that eight new charges of possession of child pornography were filed against Lennon in March 2012, after a warrant had been issued for his arrest. The Moore Police Department said last week that evidence found in his home in the 2012 case included chat logs, a desktop computer and stacks of compact discs containing images of children being sexually assaulted. A federal complaint unsealed Monday in the Western District for Oklahoma also charges Lennon with failure to register as a sex offender. According to the complaint, the Moore Police Department asked for the U.S. Marshals Service to help find Lennon in 2012 after the new case was filed against him. Police had received a call from Lennon's employer at the time, a hotel owner, saying that the man had disappeared during the night between March 11, 2012, and March 12, 2012, according to the complaint. "Detectives noticed a pool of blood, Lennon's shoe, shirt buttons, bloody shoe prints, and money missing from the hotel money drawer," the complaint said. "After examining the crime scene, interviewing family members, friends, and individuals in the community, it was determined that the circumstances were suspicious." In separate press releases, the U.S. Marshals Office and the Moore Police Department described it as "an elaborate and bloody abduction and robbery scene." The U.S. Marshals Service investigation determined that the scene had been staged and Lennon had emptied his bank accounts the day before he disappeared. Some leads have appeared over the years, including activity from Lennon's Amazon account in 2020 in the state of North Carolina. He put a phone charger in the cart, the complaint said. Two years later, someone said they believed they saw Lennon at a convention in the Dallas area. According to the complaint, Lennon obtained a state ID, birth certificate and enrolled in a university all under a false name. He allegedly made multiple attempts to obtain a passport under an alias, the complaint said. Lennon has allegedly been living under the alias "Justin Phillips" in the state of New York, the U.S. Marshals Service said. He was arrested and interviewed under the false name, but fingerprints revealed he was really Lennon, according to the agency. A spokesperson for the State University of New York at Canton confirmed that a student enrolled under the name "Justin Phillips" was arrested Thursday “for crimes committed under a different name in Oklahoma.” The spokesperson also said that he was barred from returning to the university on Friday. "He first enrolled in SUNY Canton’s engineering science program in fall of 2024 and lived off campus," the spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. "The student was only known to the college as Justin Phillips and none of our records indicate that he had a prior identity." It's unclear where Lennon is currently being held. The Oklahoma Attorney General's Office did not immediately return an email from seeking comment on Monday. He does not appear to have retained an attorney in his state or federal cases. Neither of Lennon's open cases showed any record of requests for extradition as of Monday afternoon.
