Career con man gets 40 years in fraud case

While on the lam in Mexico, 75-year-old sold millions of dollars in worthless stock

A Galveston County con man who skipped sentencing for a 2003 fraud conviction and fled to Cancun was sentenced to prison Friday in a new fraud scheme, after admitting he sold millions of dollars in worthless stock for a fake Mexican resort to hundreds of American and Canadian investors.

U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein in Houston imposed the maximum sentence of 40 years and ordered him to pay $37,544,944 in restitution, calling the defendant “despicable” for perpetuating what he considered the worst fraud case he had seen in his decades on the bench.

Harris Dempsey Ballow, 75, formerly of Tiki Island, who used the nicknames “Butch” and “Bubba,” has been in federal custody since 2010 on the earlier fraud conviction. He pleaded guilty Feb. 2 to the more recent charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In exchange for his plea, federal prosecutors agreed to drop charges against his wife and the remaining counts against him.

‘Financial predator’

Attorney Richard Kuniansky asked the judge to sentence him below federal guidelines, which would make him 92 before he was eligible for release. Prosecutors asked for the maximum, saying Ballow was a “financial predator” who had defrauded numerous people of their life savings.

The judge said Ballow had demonstrated remorse for getting his “criminal gang” of co-defendants involved, but showed no such compassion for the more than 500 victims, one of whom told the court he had been swindled out of $5 million. Ballow pretended he was a missionary to forward his scheme, the victim said.

Kuniansky called it “a difficult sentencing with a preordained poor outcome” in which it was “unlikely Mr. Ballow would outlive his sentence.”

He described his client as “a very likeable, affable elderly gentleman, which may explain why he was able to get so many people to part with their money.”

Ballow has a long history of deception, dating back a conviction in the early 1980s for financial crime against a San Diego jewelry store and a 2003 conviction for fraud and money laundering. He had been expected in a Houston federal court on Dec. 16, 2004, for sentencing on the 2003 charges, but instead he fled with his wife to Mexico, where he assumed a series of fake names and began new fraudulent business ventures, according to court documents.

He remained a fugitive for more than five years.

Obtained British passport

Under the alias John Gel, Ballow took control of E-SOL International Corp., a Nevada company that traded shares in the overthe-counter securities market under the symbol ESIT. Ballow began selling stock in and interests in a nonexistent Mexican vacation resort supposedly developed by E-SOL to unsuspecting investors.

Evidence at the trial of his former lawyer Patrick Lanier, of Austin, revealed that Ballow used the pseudonyms John Gel, Tom Brown and Marty Twinley and obtained a British passport under the name Melvyn John Gelsthorpe to sell stock for publicly traded corporations, including E-SOL International Corp., Medra Corp., Deep Earth Resources Inc. and Aztec Technology Partners Inc. He also assigned fictitious people named Robert Remington and Marilyn Desimone as officers for his business, according to court documents. He made sales for these companies without revealing his true identity and fugitive status or informing investors of his previous convictions for fraud and money laundering.