Kim Rothstein, formerly known as federal inmate 00685-104, was the wife of Scott Rothstein, a convicted Ponzi scheme fraudster who is serving a 50-year prison sentence after admitting to running a $1.4 billion Ponzi scheme. The financial fraud is considered the fourth-largest of all time. Mr. Rothstein, a disbarred attorney, is now in witness protection because he agreed to cooperate against organized crime.
Kim had served an 18-month federal prison sentence in Sumterville, Florida. Her conviction stemmed from her concealment of jewelry and other assets from prosecutors and the bankruptcy court.
Just days before Kim appeared for sentencing, she filed for divorce from her imprisoned husband. Kim additionally claimed she and her husband had been essentially separate for some time, as he fled to Morocco in 2009 and was taken into custody soon thereafter.
Kim, like others, confronted the complexities of divorcing someone involved in the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program, known as WITSEC, which is designed to ensure the safety of federal prisoners or witnesses who may be in danger because they testified or will be testifying against those accused of being involved in organized crime, terrorism, or drug-trafficking.
Scott Rothstein’s involvement in this federal program had complicated the divorce from the start. The original divorce petition took many months to sort out who in the federal prison system or WITSEC could accept service of the divorce papers and pass them along to Rothstein.
Indeed, the divorce case had nearly been dismissed for failure to effectuate timely service of process. While Kim Rothstein’s situation appears to be relatively rare, she is not the first person to encounter difficulties in addressing a family law matter arising from the witness protection program. Several people have obtained child support judgments against individuals in WITSEC, only to encounter obstacles when seeking to enforce such judgments. Most have not been successful, as enforcing the judgment would require disclosure of the individual’s location.
The difficulties faced by Kim Rothstein due to the witness protection program are, in some respects, similar to situations in which a spouse is seeking a divorce but does not know where the other spouse is located. In the case of a missing spouse, if you can demonstrate you have made diligent efforts to uncover his or her whereabouts, you may be able to pursue Service of Process by Publication. If your spouse does not respond, you can proceed with finalizing the divorce by default. However, Kim’s case was further complicated by the inability of her husband to respond due to safety concerns.