Who is the real Roger Pearce? Successful lawyer used assumed name for more than 50 years
A successful land use and zoning attorney living in a $1.4 million condo with his wife in Seattle was sentenced last week to two years of probation for making a false statement when he sought to renew his passport. (Image from the government’s Nov. 13 sentencing memorandum)
A successful land use and zoning attorney living in a $1.4 million condo with his wife in Seattle was sentenced last week to two years of probation for making a false statement when he sought to renew his passport.
The lawyer known as Roger A. Pearce Jr. had applied for the passport under an assumed name that he has used for more than 50 years. His real name is Willie Ragan Casper Jr., the 77-year-old retired lawyer admitted when he pleaded guilty three months ago in Oregon federal court to an identity fraud misdemeanor.
The Oregonian has the story, which was reprinted by Chronline.com.
During the sentencing hearing last Wednesday, Pearce’s lawyer said his client still wanted to be known as Pearce.
Pearce had assumed the name of a baby who died in Vermont in 1952.
“Pearce stole the identity when he was in his early 20s and looking to leave his troubles behind—college dropout, check fraud, a failed marriage,” the Oregonian reports.
In federal court Wednesday, Pearce explained his decision.
“I really wanted to start over,” he said.
Pearce had left his hometown in Jackson, Mississippi, to attend Rice University in Texas. He dropped out, his marriage ended and he started writing bad checks. Fearing arrest, he left Houston.
Pearce applied for a Social Security number using baby Pearce’s birth certificate in 1973, according to the government’s sentencing memorandum. At the time, the Social Security Administration didn’t have the ability to determine that baby Pearce had died.
Pearce was flagged by a program that screens applicants who received Social Security numbers as adults, a circumstance that strongly correlates to fraud, prosecutors say. Investigators were unable to find criminal conduct associated with Pearce.
“By all accounts,” the sentencing memorandum says, Pearce “lived a productive and law-abiding life in the Pacific Northwest for almost five decades under a name that was not his.”
At the time that he changed his identity, Pearce was estranged from his family because they disagreed with his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Pearce was admitted to the law school then known as the University of Puget Sound School of Law without graduating from college, the Oregonian reports. He graduated first in his class in May 1991, according to information from Pearce’s lawyer cited by the article.
Pearce went on to practice law in Washington with the Seattle law firm Foster Pepper, where he represented the development company of a Microsoft co-founder. He was admitted to the Oregon State Bar in 2014 and opened Pearce Law in the state.
Pearce’s law license is listed as inactive in both states. He must give up his law license in both places and faces an ethics investigation by the Oregon State Bar, according to the story.
He plans to legally change his name to Roger Pearce.
The Oregonian reached baby Pearce’s younger sister in Arizona, who said she is “flabbergasted” to learn that someone had used the baby’s identity. The newspaper also reached Justin Casper, the son of adult Pearce’s younger brother, Dr. Robert Casper.
“He’s alive?!” Justin Casper exclaimed when contacted by the reporter. He had assumed that Pearce had died but said he is happy to learn that it is not the case.
“He just kind of left,” Justin Casper said of Pearce. “He took off and never said where he was going. He never had any contact with his family again.”
