PHOENIX — A 66-year-old Arizona woman says she was wrongfully arrested during a federal raid for crimes she didn’t commit and now has to prove in federal court she’s not somebody else.
“I'm a senior citizen that got picked up at gunpoint in her front yard. And taken to prison,” she said. “Nobody believes it.”
The woman provided extensive documentation to ABC15 that her name is Penny McCarthy, but said federal agents insist she’s 70-year-old Carole Anne Rozak.
McCarthy and her family insist this is a wild case of mistaken identity and are demanding accountability.
“I’m mad. I’m hurt. All of a sudden, I’m on antidepressants. I’m on blood pressure medicine. I’m on medicine to sleep at night. All because somebody didn’t do their job right in the government,” she said.
Six officers, wearing bullet-proof vests, identifying themselves as U.S. Marshals, arrested her at gunpoint outside her Phoenix home last month, she said.
Even after McCarthy said she told officers she wasn’t Rozak and had never been to prison.
“They proceeded to chain my ankles, chained my wrists, put me in the back of a car and when I asked for why I was under arrest they said a parole violation,” she said.
Family members also say officers have the wrong person
Her daughter and sister both verified McCarthy’s identity and shared years of photos of her going back decades.
“Penny's never hurt anybody in her life,” her younger sister Tracy Redd said.
“It almost makes my brain stop working to think about the level of injustice involved here,” her daughter Patricia Huffman said.
Her family says Penny is a mother of five, with 11 grandchildren. She spent most of her life in Colorado until moving to Arizona last summer. Public records appear to verify her story when using McCarthy’s name.
“A little old lady… gardening in her slippers in her front yard. And it takes six U.S. Marshals to take her down,” her sister Redd said. “I think it's insane.”
According to McCarthy, officers then transported her to a federal prison in Florence, Arizona, where she would spend an agonizing night living the life of a different woman.
“Scary as hell. I’ve never been so uncomfortable… the whole having to be strip searched three times in front of all these people… It’s just humiliating and degrading,” she said.
McCarthy and her family want to know, why was she arrested? What led agents to make this raid? These are questions ABC15 tried to ask federal Marshals and the US Attorney’s Office.
“They had a picture of my Facebook picture as what they ID’d me by,” McCarthy explained.
“How is my mom, who’s on a fixed income, supposed to afford an attorney to prove she’s not someone when we don’t even know why they think she’s that person in the first place, and they are completely unwilling to tell us anything,” her daughter, Patricia Huffman, said.
Mystery deepens in court paperwork
And here’s where this story takes another wild twist.
According to the federal court paperwork, Carole Anne Rozak – the woman police say is McCarthy, has a checkered past. But her crimes and parole violation date back to the 1990s in Oklahoma. Which begs the question, why are officers in Arizona making an arrest on a parole violation out of Oklahoma from more than two decades ago?
“I was arrested on a warrant from 1999 in Oklahoma. I have never lived in Oklahoma,” McCarthy said.
The same federal records show Carole Anne Rozak went to prison for all non-violent crimes again committed three states away, including bank fraud, interstate transportation of stolen property, and false statement to a financial institution.
“I could see even if you thought I was her, if she’d been a murderer, I could then see this,” McCarthy said.
The ABC15 Investigators obtained a mugshot of a much younger Carole Anne Rozak after she was released from federal custody in 1999 in Harris County, Texas.
McCarthy also provided a copy of the recent Facebook profile photo she said officers used to identify her.
“I don’t look like this lady,” she said.
According to the federal documents, Carole Anne Rozak was born in Canada and has a Canadian social security number.
McCarthy showed us her California birth certificate and Colorado driver’s license. Both show she is a U.S. citizen. Her birthdate in 1957 also doesn’t match the one provided on court documents for Carole Anne Rozak.
“They screwed up hard,” McCarthy said.
A recently filed court order, shows a judge set an identity hearing for April 9 in Arizona federal court where McCarthy has to prove she’s her and not Rozak.
“The truth will win out. No matter how much they torture me in the process,” McCarthy said.
The U.S. Marshals Service in Arizona confirmed it arrested a woman they believed to be Carole Anne Rozak at her residence in early March. The agency said it made the arrest on behalf of U.S. Marshals in Oklahoma who believed Rozak was living under the alias of Penny McCarthy.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona said it couldn’t comment because this is an ongoing case.
The ABC15 Investigators will be in federal court next week for McCarthy’s identity hearing and will update our reporting.
Have a tip for the ABC15 Investigators? Email Investigator Jennifer Kovaleski at jennifer.kovaleski@abc15.com
