Time: Now-ish, give or take a year.
Place: Multiple; See desc.
Searched: tags, parole, parole violation, hospitalisation under false name, abundant link hopping on Wikipedia relating to fraud and identity theft.

Situation:

Character is a two-time felon, released from prison on parole from Jean, Nevada (just outside of Las Vegas, which is where his place of residence is upon release). He's not (usually) violent, and doesn't have any "special" terms of his parole (ie, no non-contact clauses or anything). He's not been out of prison 24 hours before relieving a drunken tourist of his wallet. The tourist is a particularly stupid one, having his return plane ticket home in his wallet, so what started out as getting quick cash turned into the character leaving state with a stolen plane ticket and matching identity (which is admittedly vague and sort of hand-waved by saying that all driving license photos make you look like a toad. Which, they sort of do).

The plane ticket is a direct flight to Oregon, and circumstances have him more or less stranded in a particularly backwater part of the state for between a year and a year and a half. When an opportunity presents itself for the character to finally be able to go more civilised, everything goes to hell real fast, and the character winds up shot full of holes and in a coma for nine weeks (starts out at GCS 4, and gradually recovers from there. But I've got all that info, thanks to reading the tags here last night!). While he does recover, it's not a "full recovery." He's lost a lot of hand-eye coordination, and has some substantial gaps in his memory, mostly long term, as well as lasting physical injuries from being shot full of holes.


He's been living in Oregon under his assumed name -- not his real one, and so that's what he's admitted as. In theory, anyway. Ideally, I would like for him to be discharged before anyone realises what had happened. Finding out as soon as the day after would be ideal, actually. Basically, during his time in hospital, he's not tied to either his parole violation or the crime he *tried* to commit the night he got shot.

Tentatively, he's told by the police officer that covered everything up to get out of Oregon and never come back (pseudo-crooked cop; wound up with the money the felon character had tried to steal for himself, so she had every reason to want him to go away and shut up, rather than be arrested and blow her cover). To make sure he doesn't come back, the cop gives him no small sum of money, which he uses to go to New York, where he has history from before his first conviction. Whilst in Manhattan, he continues to live under his assumed name until something happens (the insurance/fake name at hospital thing, hopefully) to call police attention to him.


How could I make this situation work, and what would wind up happening to him when the police catch up with him in New York? I would very much rather like him to avoid a life without parole prison sentence, but I do want for him to have to deal with some of what's happened. A bit of hand-wavery is fine, but I would like it to be *believable*.


_{FTR: this is not actually for a fic, but for a roleplay, which is why I want him to avoid prison.}