Neel
AUSTIN, Texas -- Former Oakland Athletics first baseman Troy Neel has been charged with fleeing to a tiny South Pacific island to avoid paying about $725,000 in child support.
The 43-year-old Neel, who used to live in Austin, has been out of the country since he was ordered in 1998 to pay $5,000 a month for his son and daughter, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Neel owes $724,325, the largest amount of back child support owed in Texas in recent years.
"While living on a private island in the South Pacific, the defendant ignored his legal obligation to support his children," Abbott said in a statement.
-- Attorney general's office spokeswoman Janece Rolfe
Neel was being held by the U.S. Marshals Service in California on Friday and could not be reached for comment. He was to be transferred back to Texas. If convicted, he faces up to two years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
"We're elated that he's now in custody," said Janece Rolfe, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office. "He has been living a life of luxury and neglecting his children. ... The day of reckoning will come."
Federal authorities arrested Neel at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday as he exited a flight from Sydney, Australia. Authorities said he was forced off the island because his passport had expired.
Neel played for Oakland from 1992 to 1994 and also played in Japan and Korea before purchasing a 16-acre resort island in the Republic of Vanuatu, where he has lived since 2000.
Remarried, he and his wife own a 21-room resort that features a restaurant overlooking a lagoon and the country's only full-service spa, according to their Web site. Vanuatu is a small chain of islands about 1,000 miles east of Australia.
Federal and state officials have been working on the Neel case for eight years. A San Antonio federal grand jury indicted Neel in 2005 on a charge of foreign travel to evade child support obligations, but it was kept under seal until now.
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