Man awaiting US extradition on child molestation charge commits suicide in jail

A Maltese national slated for extradition to the United States on a charge of sexual molestation of children in 1986 and 1987 has committed suicide at Corradino Correctional Facility. 

MaltaToday is informed that Nazzareno ‘Reno’ Mifsud was awaiting a court decision on his extradition after his arrest in August 2010. 

Mifsud had been living with the alias Ryan in Malta since evading the US charges back in the late 1980s. US prosecutors revisited his case in 2015 and started working to have him extradited to the United States. 

Corradino Correctional Facility said that Mifsud had tried committing suicide inside CCF but died at Mater Dei Hospital. 

The death adds on to a host of suicides and deaths that have taken place in the last year inside CCF. A magisterial inquiry is now underway. 

Mifsud was a US serviceman who absconded his 1987 trial in Oklahoma after being charged with molesting two young boys in his house. At 23, the Qormi man was charged with having sexually molested his foster-son, aged 15, and his neighbour’s son, a 12-year-old boy, inside his home, where he was accused of having tried to rape him.  

When Mifsud came to Malta, the island’s tradition treaty with the United States ruled out the extradition of Maltese citizens back to the US. But Mifsud was tracked down in 2015 by Oklahoma investigators, who also found his Facebook profile. 

In Malta, Mifsud managed to build a prolific career but with fraudulent qualifications: jis LinkedIn profile claimed that he obtained all his degrees, and a doctorate, from “Trinity University”, without specifying which university. 

He claimed to have been “head, ICT governance” at the Office of the Prime Minister between 1999-2001, inside the Central Information Management Unit in the prime minister’s office. It turns out that CIMU head David Spiteri Gingell hired an external consultant to investigate Mifsud’s academic degrees, which were found to be fraudulent. He was suspended and then fired from the public service.