Background: The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff”s Department’s Administration Building and Correctional Center (Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Department). Inset: Adrian James St. Romain (Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Department).
A man was able to successfully impersonate a judge to get an inmate’s bond reduced — enabling his release from jail — before authorities caught on to the con, a sheriff’s office in Louisiana said.
Adrian James St. Romain, 42, faces a slew of charges, including false impersonation, assisting escape, attempted simple escape, and injuring public records. He was arrested on Tuesday on an unrelated warrant, the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Department said in a news release, and subsequently handed the other charges for “impersonating local judges.”
The story, as authorities tell it, began in April, when someone called the Calcasieu Correctional Center claiming to be a local judge. They were “able to verbally reduce an inmate’s bond” to “Released on Recognizance,” the sheriff’s office said.
The inmate, 46-year-old Demond Lynn Delahoussaye Sr., according to local NBC affiliate KPLC, “was released on that fraudulent bond” in June.
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It was only when Delahoussaye appeared for a court hearing on July 17 that authorities “discovered the release had been granted under false pretenses.” He was then “immediately arrested and booked back into the Calcasieu Correctional Center,” the sheriff’s office said.
Delahoussaye is in jail on an aggravated assault charge, court records show. The relationship between him and St. Romain is unclear.
But St. Romain was reportedly intent on continuing this alleged deception. He is said to have “attempted two more calls in July, again impersonating a judge in an effort to set another fraudulent bond on the same inmate.”
However, he was unsuccessful, and detectives identified St. Romain as their suspect. Though he has been arrested – with help from the U.S. Marshals Service – and charged, the investigation is continuing, authorities said.
“We have policies in place and have already made changes to ensure this type of situation does not happen again,” Calcasieu Parish Sheriff Stitch Guillory said. “This was an honest error that occurred due to lack of training, and we have addressed it.”
“We did not release any information in July once it was discovered due to the fact our detectives and corrections personnel were in the middle of an active investigation. Revealing details too soon could have tipped off the suspect,” he added. “I want to commend our detectives, corrections deputies, and the CPSO Real Time Crime Center for the work they did using multiple law enforcement tools and techniques to connect the dots and identify the suspect responsible.”
As of Wednesday, St. Romain’s bond had not yet been set.
