HAMILTON — Patricia Dye, the convicted sex offender who posed as a teenage boy in an attempt to date teenage girls, was arraigned in Butler County Common Pleas Court Thursday for allegedly leaving the state without giving the required notice of her change of address.

Dye, 32, who dressed as a boy to court a 16-year-old Springboro girl, was convicted on misdemeanor sex charges in Warren County in 2010. Dye served her six-month jail sentence and moved to Middletown. She properly registered as a sex offender there, but police said did not provide her forwarding address when she went to California.

Dye appeared before Magistrate Heather Cady Thursday and said she did not consider herself a resident of either Butler or Warren counties. Cady entered a plea of not guilty for Dye and continued the $25,000 bond.

Dye was on the county’s “Most Wanted” sex offender list until federal authorities picked her up in Orick, Calif. on Dec. 8. Two Butler County Sheriffs deputies flew west and returned Dye to Ohio on Dec. 29.

Prosecutor Mike Gmoser said it cost the county $2,500 to collect Dye but the county will be reimbursed $2,000 from a fund set up by the Ohio Attorney General.

Gmoser said if authorities don’t pursue wayward sex offenders, there is no point in keeping track of them.

“Registration is something that has to be attended to and if we don’t enforce it, people are going to walk away from it,” he said. “If it’s going to have any teeth in it, it’s necessary for the prosecution and the sheriff’s office, which they did, to bring them back.”

Dye is scheduled to reappear in court on the fourth-degree felony charge on Jan. 19.

Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.