Two multimillion-dollar fraudsters in their 60s fled a minimum-security federal prison camp near Duluth, leaving behind years of unfinished sentences, authorities said Sunday.
Michael Krzyzaniak, 64, and Gerald Greenfield, 67, were discovered missing from the facility about 10 p.m. Saturday during a "regularly scheduled prisoner count," said U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Thomas Volk. The pair were last seen at a 5 p.m. head count, he said.
Krzyzaniak, of Minneapolis, has nine years to serve of a more than 12-year term for bilking investors out of nearly $26 million. He pleaded guilty in 2011 to wire fraud and tax evasion.
Greenfield, of Bloomington, has a projected release date of Nov. 2, 2015, from his more than four-year sentence for conspiracy to commit money laundering. He helped a developer of the Sexton Lofts in downtown Minneapolis run a $2.5 million mortgage fraud scheme and hid the profits by wiring money to an attorney in Australia.
Inmates at the 30-year-old all-male camp, on the former Duluth Air Force Base and located about 7 miles north of the city, are "pretty much there on the honor system," as opposed to a high-security setting with locked cells, Volk said. He didn't know if the pair had to elude guards or the prison layout.
"There aren't even any walls," said Volk, whose description was confirmed by Duluth prison spokesman David Baker.
The federal Bureau of Prisons is "extremely good at figuring out who should go where," Volk said. "Generally, they don't put someone at a prison camp who fits the profile of walking away."
"We don't have [escapes] very often at all," said Baker, who said he can recall none in his 13 years at this post.
