appear for trial in May 1981, and the Accredited Surety and Casualty Co. stood to forfeit the $137,500 bail it had posted in exchange for a 10 percent fee.

Johnsen and Kear took Jaffe, dressed in a jogging suit, from his condominium and drove him to Niagara Falls, N.Y., for a private jet flight to Orlando. Within 12 hours he was in the Putnam County jail.

In Kear's words, he did not think at the time that such actions were ''that big a deal'' -- just a job he had performed more than 150 times in the United States during his 14-year career in the bail bonding business in Virginia.

But the clause in the bail bond Jaffe signed that gave the defendants the right to apprehend him was not legalin Canada. Within a few months of Jaffe's return to Florida, Kear and Johnsen had been ordered extradited to stand trial.

The case became an irritant between the Canadian and U.S. governments and was a topic at bilateral talks.

Jaffe was convicted of failure to appear for trial and 28 counts of violating the Florida Uniform Land Sales Practices Act. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

His family acted as a lobbying and public relations team with the purpose of seeing him freed from prison. That goal was reached in late 1983 after a Florida appeal court overturned his land sales convictions. He was later paroled on the failure to appear charge.

He returned to Canada and served as star witness against Johnsen and Kear, who pleaded not guilty to