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Houston-area fugitive hiding out in Mexico, FBI suspects By KEVIN MORAN
The FBI is asking the public's help to find a former Galveston County man who often uses religion to bilk people of their life savings and has stolen millions from major brokerages and banks in stock-fraud scams.
Convicted con man Harris Dempsey "Butch" Ballow disappeared in December 2004, just days before he was to be sentenced in a Houston federal court on one count of money laundering. Eleven other counts were dismissed.
This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation posted Ballow's photograph on its Houston district list of 10 most-wanted fugitives.
Ballow pleaded guilty in 2003 to fraud in a stock scam that cost brokerages across the country more than $10 million and resulted in uncalculated losses nationally to individual investors. Federal prosecutors, who adamantly had opposed allowing Ballow's release on bail after his November 2003 arrest, finally agreed to it in September 2004. The government has refused to disclose terms of the agreement.
Ballow, now 65, has been sighted in Mexico as recently as last year but has avoided capture even after a Houston private investigator told U.S. officials where he was hiding. He is believed to still be hiding out in Mexico and running multimillion-dollar stock scams in the United States from there. He may be in Merida or Cancun, on the Yucatan Peninsula, FBI Special Agent Ray Lewis said this week.
"My understanding, from various sources, is that he is continuing to perpetrate stock scams from overseas locations," Lewis said. "We believe that is how he is making his living."
In the last years before his arrest, Ballow could be found most Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings — Bible in hand — in the front row of La Marque's Abundant Life Christian Center. He donated more than $465,000 to the church, according to court records, while luring some fellow worshippers into some of his stock schemes.
"Many victims I spoke to said that one of the reasons they decided to turn over their life savings to Mr. Ballow is because he prayed with them," Lewis said. "One of his schticks was that he would pray over breakfast, lunch and dinner.
"That's unusual," Lewis said. "He's very good at it."
Ballow and his wife, Robin Harless Ballow, also a convicted felon, lived in a $700,000 Tiki Island home before his arrest. She is believed to be with him now. Robin Ballow was indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with one scheme in 1988. In a plea agreement, she admitted to one wire-fraud charge and received three years' probation.
The Ballows still have relatives and close friends in the Houston-Galveston area, Lewis said, and the FBI believes the couple has been in contact with some of them. With media exposure, Lewis said, the FBI hopes someone will provide information that helps authorities find Ballow and return him to this country. Houston private investigator John Moritz says federal officials dropped the ball after he gave them an address in Merida, Mexico where Ballow had an office.
"We gave them exact locations," said Moritz, who posted a $10,000 reward in Mexican media last June for information leading to Ballow's arrest. "If anybody has ever flubbed, they have."
But knowing where Ballow is and being able to arrest him are two different issues, said Special Agent Shauna Dunlap, spokeswoman for the Houston FBI office.
"Even if we know exactly where someone is in a certain country, there's still a series of things that have to take place before we are able to go out and arrest them with that country's authority," she said.
Moritz works for Houston businessman Jakie Sandefer, who along with a partner lost money to Ballow in a 1990s stock scam. Sandefer sued in state court, won an $8.5 million judgment and then set out to collect it. Evidence of Ballow's extensive fraud schemes, uncovered by Moritz after he was retained by Sandefer, led to Ballow's arrest in 2003. Sandefer recovered most of his losses through seizures of Ballow's Tiki Island home and other assets.
Sandefer and others who have crossed paths with Ballow maintain that he has stolen $100 million or more in the past 15 to 20 years by illegally manipulating prices of over-the-counter securities in "pump-and-dump" schemes. Such a scheme involves trading stock between accounts to create the appearance of heavy market activity and drive up the share price. When Ballow dumped large blocks of shares he controlled on the market, he profited, but share prices dropped drastically and other investors were left with practically worthless stock.
Ballow started at least one multimillion-dollar stock scam after his release on bail and before he fled, federal officials say. Ballow and others spent the first few months of 2004 setting up "shell" corporations through which he and his accomplices acquired control of Tennessee-based AIMSI Technologies, according to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in New York City.
People who have information about Ballow can call their local FBI office. The number for the Houston office is 713-693-5000. Residents of Mexico can call the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate. Ballow has used the aliases John Gilthorp and John Gill since he disappeared, Moritz said. He also has used the names Joe David Gibbons and David C. Wood, according to the FBI.
The FBI's fugitive information on Ballow is available online at: www.fbi.gov/wanted/fugitives/wcc/ballow_db.htm .
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