The Fugitive Samantha Bowerman, CMP President, Strategic Meetings Group
sions. At one point, the guy who was our contact at the convention center came running over to me in a panic, saying, “Oh my God, we have a situation. The sheriff is here, and he wants to arrest your speaker.” My first question was, “Which one?” My next question was, “Where’s the
I
sheriff?” He was in an office right off the exhibition floor. The convention manager told me that the sheriff wasn’t looking to create a scene, but he did need to bring the speaker before a judge.
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was running a convention, a trade show that was mainly exhibits, but there were a few educational ses-
So I tracked down the president of the organization and explained what was going on. I suggested he might want to go along with the sheriff to make sure that there were no issues. As it turns out, the speaker was just finishing up his presentation — the organization’s president helped to cut the question-and-answer session off. Then he told the speaker, “There’s a police officer waiting outside, who apparently needs to take you to go see a judge.” The speaker went very willingly. The issue was something to do
with a business that the speaker had sold. He was in a legal battle and was
supposed to be before a judge, and didn’t show up for his court appoint- ment. They apparently Googled his name and saw that he was speaking, and that’s how they found him. I posted about it on Facebook,
and one of my friends who has a production company responded that something like that happened to him with one of his camera operators. The police waited until after that session was finished, too.