Just four days after a federal judge put Xpress Pharmacy Direct into receivership, Smith made what prosecutors say was a brazen play to stay in business.

Smith took off for the Dominican Republic and went to work setting up a new online pharmacy and call center, where prosecutors say he hoped he'd be safe from extradition and out of the reach of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Former employees, his wife and even his girlfriend brought or sent Smith "substantial sums of cash" there, and one former employee passed him a disk with data on more than 100,000 Xpress Pharmacy customers, court documents and testimony allege.

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Smith even managed to withdraw some money from an account that was supposed to be frozen. He also launched two new Web sites, the documents allege.

In the Dominican Republic, Smith was a guest of Creaghan Harry, a man the government described as another notorious spammer.

According to the court documents, Harry, who runs a call center there, earned more than $2 million from Smith for telemarketing.

Harry said the call center he manages, Santo Domingo-based Americas Best Worldwide, was just one of many that took orders for Smith. He said it had no other connection with Smith's new business.

"We basically got pulled in to this because Chris Smith decided to come down here," Harry told The Associated Press. "But we are not his company or even his call center. Taking pharmaceutical orders is only a small part of our business."

Harry acknowledged that Smith had stayed in his Santo Domingo apartment for a week in early June, but then left for a beach resort in Boca Chica, outside Santo Domingo, where he took up scuba diving. He then went to the eastern island resort town of Punta Cana, Harry said.

"It just seemed Chris was on vacation," he said.

Though Smith mentioned over a few lunches in Santo Domingo that he planned to start up a new business, he didn't offer details, Harry said.

Whether it was a business trip or vacation, it ended with Smith going straight to jail when he returned to Minnesota.

Authorities arrested him on a contempt-of-court warrant and said in court last month that they plan to seek unspecified criminal charges against him. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Engisch told U.S. District Judge Michael Davis a grand jury has been hearing evidence against Smith and others she did not name. She said she did not know when indictments might come down, nor did she say what the charges might be.

Smith and his stepfather declined to comment on his legal troubles as he left the courthouse the next day after his release on $50,000 bail. Prosecutors also declined to comment on the case, citing the ongoing investigation.

Smith's father, Scott Smith, declined to comment for this story after initially agreeing to talk. In an earlier interview with the Star Tribune, he portrayed his son as a business genius who dropped out of high school because he was bored.

"That spamming stuff they talk about, sometimes Chris may have been a middleman helping other business people, but he never broke the law. I'm sure of it," Scott Smith told the newspaper.

As Smith sat in Davis' courtroom, wearing orange jail garb and flashing an occasional forlorn smile at his father and wife, high-profile local defense lawyer Joe Friedberg conceded that Smith had violated the judge's May 20 injunction by taking $2,000 from a frozen account.

But Friedberg contends the government hasn't proven that anything else Smith did in the Dominican Republic was illegal.

As Davis freed Smith on bail, he put him on home monitoring and ordered him to surrender his passports.

And Davis admonished Smith: Stay away from computers and don't set up any more Web sites.

Associated Press Writer Peter Prengaman contributed to this story from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

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