Parents in US 'balloon boy' hoax plead guilty
Posted: 14 November 2009 0522 hrs

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FORT COLLINS, Colorado: The parents behind the "balloon boy" hoax pleaded guilty to criminal charges arising from the case on Friday and will be sentenced next month, a Colorado judge ruled.

Richard and Mayumi Heene, who allegedly fabricated the stunt in a bid to land their own reality television show, spoke quietly as they entered their pleas before a packed court-room at Larimer County Court.

Richard Heene, 48, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant while Mayumi, 45, a Japanese national, admitted a misdemeanour offence of false reporting to authorities.

Although the charges are punishable by jail terms of 90 and 60 days respectively, the couple are widely expected to receive probation as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

The Heenes will be sentenced on December 23, Judge Stephen Schapanski ruled during a morning hearing at the court in Fort Collins, outside Denver.

The couple could also be faced with a bill running into tens of thousands of dollars for the multi-agency search and rescue effort that took place after they reported that their six-year-old son had accidentally floated away on a home-made air balloon shaped like a flying saucer.

The child was later discovered hiding at home. Police said the incident had been a hoax designed by the Heenes to help them obtain a television deal.

The family's lawyer David Lane said in a statement on Thursday that the couple agreed the plea deal in order to prevent the possibility of Japan-born Mayumi being deported from the United States if convicted.

Although Mayumi Heene had admitted the hoax under questioning by Colorado investigators, she could not have been forced to testify against her husband and her confession would have been inadmissible as evidence, Lane said.

That scenario created the possibility that Mayumi could have been convicted and deported while her husband may have been acquitted, Lane said.

"Mayumi could have possibly ended up being deported and Richard could have proceeded to trial and had a good chance at an acquittal," the statement said.

"This however would have put the family at grave risk of seeing a loving, caring, compassionate wife and mother ripped from the family and deported. That was not an acceptable risk, thus these pleas," Lane said. - AFP/de