| Oct 2001 16:30:03 -30000
KNOX NEWS Dream lover Was charmer who swept women off their feet too good to be true? By Laura Ayo, News-Sentinel staff writer Editor's note: This is Part I of a three-part serial chronicling the life of James Wayne Farmer, a man whose "successes" brought sorrow to others. His letters basically began the same way. "I saw your ad in the July issue of the Los Angeles magazine and finally got up the nerve enough to write," he wrote. "I'm new to this sort of letter writing, so please bear with me and I'll try to tell you a little about myself." His tidy cursive handwriting matter-of-factly recounted his 30-plus-year career in the U.S. Air Force that took him to such faraway places as Thailand, Spain, Belgium and the Philippines. His words never once portrayed the bravery or sense of duty he must have felt while flying 200 combat missions in F-4E fighters in Vietnam. They never described the fear many would have felt about being shot down and being a prisoner of war for 37 days; or the relief he must have felt when a Vietnamese girl he "hated to leave behind" helped him escape. His letters discussed where he was stationed, the types of planes he flew and the titles he held, such as base commander of the 13th Air Force at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, "home of the F-102 Delta Dagger fighters." And, as one might expect of a man who dedicates his life to serving his country, his assignments and titles grew in importance and prestige as the years passed. "In 1990, was chief of procurement (for) the U.S. Air Force at the Pentagon and in 1991 was appointed by President (George) Bush confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be vice chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force which is the No. 2 job in the entire Air Force," he wrote. He said he later retired as a general after working at the Pentagon for then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell. For the skeptics, he had official-looking letterhead and matching envelopes. At the top of the light bluish-gray paper was a silver-colored emblem that resembled the Great Seal of the United States. Four silver stars separated the emblem and the word "GENERAL," printed in capital letters. Below that, printed in royal blue capital letters, was the phrase, "J. Wayne Farmer, U.S. Air Force, Retired," and an address. "Sorry I don't have a photo of myself at present, but will send you a copy of some I had so you can get an idea of what I look like," he wrote. Two of those photographs showed him wearing a military uniform jacket, complete with shoulder boards sporting three stars and multiple ribbons and medals covering his left breast. He wore a fez in a third photograph, memorializing his role as a Shriner for the Orcomot Shrine Club of the Ararat Shrine. Quite a catch But his letters related more than just his stellar military career. They told of the education he received from ivy-draped schools - a law degree from Yale, a master's in business administration from Harvard, an accounting degree from Purdue. Those reading the letters learned he was 5 feet 11 inches tall, had hazel eyes, was a nonsmoker, kept away from alcohol and jogged three to five miles a day, usually to check on his beef cattle herd. Most readers would assume it was a herd he inherited because the letters said he was "born and raised" on his father's large farm. "I'm very frank, honest with a weird sense of humor, straightforward, candid, very plain-spoken, open-minded, broad-minded, understanding, with integrity, dignified, distinguished, sophisticated, energetic, eclectic, intuitive, respectful, trustworthy, have an inquisitive mind, loyal, gentle, loving, amorous, caring, sincere, considerate, multifaceted, multi-interests, one-woman man, a very quiet and private person, down-to-earth kind of individual . . ." he wrote. He didn't have any children from his prior marriage, but he wrote in his letters that he'd "always wanted a couple" of children of his own. And he knew what he was looking for in a woman - someone who was kind, understanding, cultured, educated, sophisticated and ready for a monogamous relationship that would end in marriage. "I am a very wealthy man and just want someone to love me for me," he wrote. Countless women must have liked what they read, as evidenced by the hundreds of letters found in an ice chest by one of his most recent wives. "These were letters from other women that he had answered ads or written ads and they had answered him, several books of, I guess, lonely hearts clubs or something," the woman said. The letters came from as close as Knoxville and Canada and as distant as China, Indonesia, Puerto Rico, Thailand, Spain, Belgium, England, Guam, Malaysia, Poland and Venezuela. While the Hawkins County woman didn't meet James Wayne Farmer by answering a personals ad, he portrayed himself to her the same way he had portrayed himself in many of the letters she found. A whirlwind romance A mutual acquaintance suggested they meet. And after some lengthy telephone conversations and a few letters, they met in person in early 2000 at a Waffle House. He wore a suit to that first meeting. "When I first met him, he was dressed impeccably, nice clothes," she recalled. "He drove a nice car. You couldn't ask for anybody more mannerly or more considerate. I thought, 'If he's as good as he says he is, I've really hit on a very nice person.' " She had already learned he was a retired four-star Air Force general and that he had owned a ranch in Kansas. He had kept a large herd of cattle on the thousands of acres he owned there. He was well educated, was living out his retirement in Alabama and was a Shriner. "Anything you asked him, he had an answer for," she said. They were relatively close in age - she was 68 and he was 66 - and when she learned that he was a widower, she couldn't help but feel a connection. Her husband had died a few years before from cancer. "It was sort of like a common bond because you feel a little connected with someone who is widowed," she said. After their in-person meeting, he began pursuing her and those pursuits turned into a whirlwind romance. "He would say, 'You are exactly what I'm looking for, and I've been looking for years,' " she remembered. He always dressed well, wearing expensive suits, $100 ties, imported shoes, custom-made shirts that were cut well and looked nice on him. And he drove a blue Lincoln Town Car that he paid $46,000 cash for new in 1996. "He would go out and buy nice perfume," she recalled. "He had nice tastes, expensive tastes." After they married, he bought her an emerald and diamond dinner ring believed to be valued at $5,500. "He wasn't interested in cheap stuff," she said. He didn't drink, smoke or curse. And they attended church together, his voice lifting up to the heavens when it came time to sing. "He was a good Baptist," she said. "He insisted on going to church." Weeks after their meeting at the Waffle House, he showed up at her home and showed her a beautiful set of diamond rings. "He said, 'I'm out of practice with this,' and he got down on his knees and asked me to marry him," she said. "I laughed at him." But he wasn't dissuaded. "He said, 'You might not accept them now, but I will put them on your finger,' " she recalled. In the weeks that followed, he regularly brought up the subject of marriage. "I think the more I rebuffed him, the more determined he was," she said. "He was so persuasive. He said, 'Neither one of us needs to be by ourselves.' " Then one day he called her and she told him she had a cold and didn't feel like talking. "He said, 'You don't need to be there by yourself,' " she said. " 'I'm going to take care of you until you get better.' " He drove to her home and stayed with her for a couple of days. And during his time there, he convinced her to marry him. "He could be absolutely charming and so attentive," she said. So on April 25, 2000, they drove to a small city in northern Georgia where a minister married them in a small chapel across the street from the brick county courthouse. "I fell for the man I thought he was," she said. But shortly into their 13-month marriage, the woman found out, like so many others before her, that he was nothing that she thought. Trail of lies Con artist convinced lonely women to share their lives and money By Laura Ayo, News-Sentinel staff writer
Editor's note: This is Part II of a three-part serial chronicling the
life of James Wayne Farmer, a man whose The story so far: James Wayne Farmer was a prolific letter writer. He, in turn, received countless responses from women around the world. And why not? He said he was an Air Force general and a combat pilot, a graduate of ivy-draped schools with law and accounting degrees and a master's in business administration. He owned a large cattle ranch. He was athletic, attentive and a natty dresser. The women he married he swept off their feet with romance. Who could ask for more? She knew from the day she met him. "Something wasn't right," said the daughter of a widowed Hawkins County woman who married James Wayne Farmer in April 2000 after a whirlwind courtship. The daughter described it as a gut feeling - he didn't socialize well with their family; he claimed to be involved with Shriner and Masonic organizations, but didn't know things only they would know; her mother wasn't acting like herself. "Things just didn't add up," she said. So she started some sleuthing. "I found out my feelings weren't quite unfounded; they were legitimate," she said. "He had a criminal past that would knock your socks off." Less than a year before, the son of an elderly widow in Cullman, Ala., was finding out the same things about Farmer from a U.S. postal inspector. "The first time I met him he just seemed like a pretty good Joe," the son said. "He wore them fancy clothes and $150 shoes. He would go to church for mother. He'd be Spic and Span." Like with the Hawkins County woman, Farmer had told the Cullman widow and her family that he was also widowed, a retired U.S. Air Force general and owned a lot of land in another state. "He had his story down pat," the Hawkins County woman said. He couldn't show anyone the many ribbons and medals he had earned during his stellar military career because they, like many of his belongings, had burned in a house fire years before. But both families soon came to believe there had never been a fire. "This woman (the Cullman widow) had been writing to Farmer and it was obvious she was a potential target," recalled Dennis Bowden, now retired from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Kansas City, Mo. Through an investigation, Bowden had learned Farmer made a habit of conning people, most of them widows or women seeking companionship. His scams often followed the same formula. He corresponded with women he met through ads in Lonely Hearts magazines and the personals sections of newspapers, or he met them through dating services. "Retired A.F. Colonel, divorced, 57 yr old, wishes to correspond with a refined, personable lady," read one ad placed in the Kansas City Star in 1977. He gained the confidence of the women he courted. And shortly into their relationships, sometimes on their first date even, he proposed marriage. "He would do a little tailoring to be whatever it was they were looking for," Bowden said. Sometimes he didn't even need to get to the altar to convince them to put their homes up for sale. Other times, the honeymoon wasn't even over before he disappeared with their money, their cars and often the confidence they at one time had in their own judgment. "You always hear about these people, the Lonely Hearts bandits, but he's the only one I ever saw," Bowden said. So when Bowden found some of the Cullman widow's letters to Farmer, he set to work tracking down her son. "Mr. Bowden called me and told me he (Farmer) was an ex-con artist," the son said. He recalled what it was like when he and Bowden told his mother the truth about Farmer's past. "She couldn't even talk," the son said. "I said, 'Mr. Farmer ain't who he said he was.' ... She sat there with her mouth open." Farmer had an explanation for his time in prison, though. "He had owned a nursing home and he said his secretary had stolen some money ... and he had to take the blame," the son said. Farmer gave the Hawkins County woman a similar explanation for his time in prison - except the person who he said had committed the fraud at the nursing home was his wife at the time, a woman named Elvera. Part of his story was truthful. In 1972, he and Elvera owned the Kinder Care Nursing Home, located in a historic 84-year-old stone mansion in Kansas City known by locals as "the Castle" because of its turrets. Elvera was listed as sole administrator of the nursing home through 1986. "He convinced my mother I was a trouble-maker," the daughter of the Hawkins County woman recalled. And when she would call to speak with her mother, he wouldn't put her on the phone. Like many before her, Farmer wanted the Hawkins widow to put her house up for sale and open joint banking accounts with him. But her daughter convinced her to wait a year into the marriage before making any financial decisions. She did and eventually came to believe that what her daughter was telling her about Farmer was true. "He cost me quite a bit, but he did not con me out of a lot (of money)," she said. "I feel lucky that I got out as easily as I did." A history unraveled It wouldn't be until after her marriage to Farmer that Katherine, a 26-year-old Canadian woman, would find out the "Friendship Club" ad she answered had been placed by someone about to be released from federal prison for masquerading as someone he wasn't. He proposed during their correspondence and she traveled to Knoxville to marry the well-off man she believed had a large farm and owned the controlling stock of a steel company. They married on Jan. 27, 1959, and the next day, Farmer sent her back to Canada to quit her job and collect her things so she could begin her life with him in East Tennessee. He had asked her to put her money in a joint bank account. But while she was out of the country, Farmer, then 25, was in Wichita, Kan., marrying another woman he also had met through a similar ad. The marriage between Farmer and the 30-year-old Newton, Kan., woman named Elvera took place Feb. 6. Days later, he left for Indiana, telling his newest bride he had business to attend to there. But while in Indiana, he met up with a third correspondent, a young Wichita woman named Zenith, whom he also wanted to marry. The two never made it to the altar, however. Instead, Farmer sent her to Knoxville, where she was to wait for him. And he returned to the waiting Elvera. Meanwhile, Katherine had been trying to contact her new husband to get some paperwork in order for her to be able to live in the United States. When she hadn't heard from him, she returned to Knoxville to look for him. And it was there that she ran into Zenith. Both women had contacted authorities for help in finding their beloved. The women compared notes and learned of his time in prison and of Elvera. Katherine brought a bigamy charge against Farmer and had their marriage annulled. Zenith brought an embezzlement charge against him and ended their affair. But Elvera stuck by him, even when he was sentenced to not more than five years in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing for bigamy. The embezzlement charge was later dropped. But another prison sentence didn't stop him from committing similar crimes against women. He'd receive a blackmail sentence of one to five years in Kansas for threatening to make public nude photographs of a woman named Dorothy unless she paid him $2,500. He'd receive a federal sentence in Wichita of 15 years in prison for mail fraud involving another scheme to defraud female members of Lonely Hearts clubs. Preying on emotion
Former Johnson County, Kan., prosecutor Larry McClain still remembers
the March 1977 morning Farmer was to stand trial on charges that he
bilked a 57-year-old widow named Emma out of her life's savings. The bulk of the money - about $42,000 - had come from the insurance policy her husband had left for her when he died. Farmer, who had met Emma through a dating service, had married the woman who was 14 years his senior and convinced her to set up a joint bank account that gave him access to her funds. Four days after the wedding, Farmer, whom she knew as William Farnsworth, and the money were gone. On the morning of trial, Farmer's lawyer wanted to cut a deal that would allow the charge to be dismissed if Farmer paid Emma $35,000 in cash by a certain date. "I felt the guy needed to go to prison," recalled McClain, now a district judge in the same county. But he agreed to the deal for Emma's sake. "He (Farmer) cleaned out the money she had planned on using the rest of her days and I just couldn't do it to her," McClain said. "I remember the case because it was such an emotional struggle for me." He remembers also how Farmer, a quiet man, never showed any remorse for what he had done. "He's an evil person and although his crimes were 'property' crimes, from the cases I handled, he inflicted tremendous emotional harm," McClain said. "I recall (Emma) saying in the courthouse, 'I just don't have my confidence in my ability to do anything anymore.' He destroyed her confidence.' " Four days after making the deal, Farmer was arrested again - this time for defrauding a 71-year-old widow from Kansas City that he had married about a month earlier.
McClain doesn't remember details about that case, possibly because the
Kansas City widow quickly dropped the criminal charge against Farmer,
opting instead to file a civil lawsuit against him in which she sought
to recoup about $70,000 she says he bilked from her. But McClain filed court documents at the time that alleged Farmer planned to satisfy the $35,000 judgment to Emma by convincing the Kansas City woman to put her house up for sale for about $38,000. He does recall that Farmer paid the money back to Emma, even though the house wasn't sold. Old habits die hard Farmer would only get a 30-day jail sentence, probation and an order for restitution for a confidence game he carried out on a 66-year-old retired Kansas City teacher named Louise. Telling her his name was also Farnsworth and that he was a retired accountant with two children in Tennessee and a grandchild dying of leukemia, Farmer proposed to Louise on their first date, convinced her to put her house on the market and take out a $12,000 loan so they could buy a home together. While supposedly visiting the ill grandchild, he married Emma in Miami, Okla., a town once known as the "Midwestern marriage mill." He would return to Miami nine months later and marry Helen, one of two 62-year-old Des Moines, Iowa, widows he defrauded. Years later, he would marry the Hawkins County widow in Ringgold, Ga., a small city outside of Chattanooga still known today as the marriage capital of Georgia. "I am not sure that he wasn't already married to several others, when I married him myself," the woman would later tell a federal judge. After meeting Helen through a computerized dating service, Farmer convinced her to add his name to her bank account. He disappeared with about $19,800 from the account shortly after they exchanged vows. He convinced the other Des Moines widow, Mary, to take early retirement from the insurance company for which she had worked 14 years. She also sold her home and put her life savings in a joint bank account. And Farmer disappeared after the wedding with about $12,000. Those scams resulted in Farmer's probation being revoked and a five-year Missouri state prison sentence being imposed. He also was sentenced in Des Moines to 10 years in a federal prison for mail fraud involving Helen, Mary and a third woman named Phyllis. He would continue his prolific letter writing while serving his time, wooing a 68-year-old Independence, Mo., widow named Jennie out of her dead husband's $25,000 insurance policy by telling her he could be released early from prison and marry her if he got the funds. That con, as well as his promises of marriage to a 51-year-old Kansas City woman named Ann and a 59-year-old Independence woman named Clara, resulted in a sentence of 11 more years in a federal prison. "He has ... preyed on the emotions of the most vulnerable," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Cook, one of the many attorneys to prosecute Farmer. "(A report) sets out a history of him preying on widows and he has done so at a time when they are the weakest." But Farmer masqueraded as many more things than just a lonely man seeking someone with which to share his golden years.
And when he was released from prison the next time, he began haunting
new victims. Con artist's gallery Man scammed under guise of lawyer, doctor, Air Force captain By Laura Ayo, News-Sentinel staff writer
Editor's note: This is Part III of a three-part serial chronicling the
life of The story so far: The marriages and proposals of marriage all seemed too good to be true, but James Wayne Farmer was adept in carrying them out. He had an answer for everything and everyone. His trail of deceit ran from Canada to Kansas from Missouri to Iowa and from Alabama to Tennessee. Even when the law caught him, he danced from one con to another. Prison was no problem. He was a predator, and his prey was waiting for him. He doesn't know for sure how James Wayne Farmer was able to steal his identity. But he knows one thing for certain. "He's been a nemesis for me," Kansas City, Mo., lawyer E. Wayne Farmer said. He believes Farmer has been using his personal information, most notably his Social Security number, since at least 1995. But he only has theories about how Farmer got that information. At one time, James Wayne Farmer rented an apartment in a complex located across the street from where E. Wayne Farmer and his wife were living temporarily. The lawyer theorized that Farmer may have gone through some trash. Federal agents have also told him Farmer may have obtained the information by writing the Missouri Department of Revenue to request photocopies of some of the lawyer's income tax returns. While a 1995 letter from the Revenue Department was directed to James Wayne Farmer at a mailing address for a federal prison in Sandstone, Minn., the copies of the income tax returns that were sent with the letter have the name E. Wayne Farmer on them. "It's pretty incredible they would release that information," the lawyer said. Regardless of how James Wayne Farmer was able to assume the lawyer's identity, it wasn't the first time he professed to be proficient in a skilled profession. The doctor is in David D. Dowd Jr., a senior federal judge in Akron, Ohio, still remembers the day he went to confront Farmer about who he said he was. It was April 18, 1972, and Farmer, until that day, had been known in Canton, Ohio, as Dr. Edward Bradley. Representing himself to have earned a medical degree from Northwestern University and a master's degree in hospital administration from the University of Michigan, Farmer landed the top job of hospital administrator and medical director at Molly Stark Hospital, a 200-bed extended-care facility. "He was no more a doctor than you or I," Dowd said. But when Molly Stark officials did their only background check to verify whether Bradley was licensed to practice medicine in Ohio, they got the green light. That's because there really was a Dr. Edward Bradley. He was a Michigan doctor who happened to also be licensed to practice medicine in Ohio. And Farmer had worked for Bradley as an assistant administrator at a Saginaw, Mich., hospital just two years before. In April of 1972 a WHLO radio station employee and a hospital board member approached Dowd, then a Stark County prosecutor, with their belief that the hospital's new director wasn't who he said he was. "By noon, I was convinced he was a phony," Dowd said. "I called the sheriff and I said I thought we ought to go out and confront him."
But Farmer had gotten wind that they were coming and fled about 10
minutes before their arrival. Investigations revealed that Farmer, prior to coming to Molly Stark, had convinced another Michigan hospital and a Wichita hospital to hire him as well. He had used the name Wayne G. Farmer and said he had numerous degrees in applying for a junior accounting job at the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, the Saginaw job and an administrator position at Mercy Hospital in Monroe, Mich. "He merged into the community well-respected," said Patricia Campbell, community relations director at Mercy. She recalled that Farmer taught Sunday school at a local church. "He posed as Wayne Farmer and had false documentation indicating his education or employment," Campbell said. "He was fired after they found him out." To get some of the hospital jobs, Farmer also indicated he had served as a high-ranking Air Force officer and held several posts at Air Force base hospitals. "I do remember he put up a very persuasive front," Dowd said. "He was good enough to con that board and con the help that he was a doctor." Once at the now-defunct Molly Stark Hospital, Farmer reorganized the staff and suspended several employees. "I think the people who worked closest with him began to suspect he was a phony," Dowd said. Seven months after Farmer fled from Ohio to Kansas City, Missouri authorities agreed to extradite him as part of a swap for an individual held in Ohio who was accused of murder in Missouri. Farmer was later sentenced to 90 days in jail on a charge of unlawful practice of medicine and five years of probation for larceny by trick charges. He never earned any of the degrees he claimed to have. Although he can show people a picture of himself wearing a fez for the Orcomot Shrine Club of the Ararat Shrine in Kansas City, no one there has heard of him. And his military service wasn't what he presented it to be either. Answering Uncle Sam's call But Farmer wrote and talked about the military like he knew it from the inside. Most of the places he mentioned being stationed existed. The majority of the planes he said he flew were genuine military aircraft. And most of the titles he said he held were legitimate. They just weren't his. In reality, Farmer served less than three months in the U.S. Navy; about a month in the U.S. Marines Corps; and nearly four months in the U.S. Air Force. But the first two of what would be a lifetime of criminal convictions stemmed from his decisions to impersonate federal employees, including an Air Force captain. In April 1955, about four months after his discharge from the Marines, Farmer walked into a bank in White Pine, Tenn., claimed he was a federal agent and tried to cash a $600 check. He spent a year in the Federal Reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio, for the offense. Two days after being discharged from the Air Force, he went to Beaty Chevrolet in Knoxville, said he was a captain in the Air Force and obtained a 1956 Chevy. After authorities caught up with him and the car - which he apparently sold to a dealership - in Mobile, Ala., he went to federal prison for 2 1/2 years. In need of a loan While Farmer hasn't harmed E. Wayne Farmer's good credit, the lawyer said he's had to dedicate time and effort to keep Farmer from doing damage. Trying to purchase cars or houses and cashing checks are more of a hassle then they used to be. "Mentally, it drains you," he said. "You have to go through credit checks and put alerts on everything." But one of those alerts led to Farmer's most recent downfall. On Feb. 6, 2001, Farmer walked into a First Tennessee Bank in Knoxville, said he was E. Wayne Farmer and, using the lawyer's Social Security number, applied for a $1 million loan so he could buy two pieces of property on Tazewell Pike that were owned by his relatives. The bank, having run a credit report on the personal information Farmer provided, saw the lawyer's fraud alert on the report and contacted FBI Special Agent Gideon Beck. "We contacted the real E. Wayne Farmer," Beck said. "He indicated he was not applying for a loan at First Tennessee Bank." When Farmer came back to the bank on Valentine's Day to further the loan application, the FBI was waiting for him. "(A bank employee) verified the Social Security number that he was using and the name he wanted to use on the loan," Beck said. "He asked whether he wanted (the name) E. Wayne Farmer or Wayne Farmer on the loan. He said, 'Wayne Farmer.' He was always trying to drop the E, although he told people that his name was E. Wayne Farmer." Beck confronted Farmer and after he declined to waive his rights and talk to agents, he was placed under arrest. By contacting the real estate agent who had referred Farmer to First Tennessee, Beck found out Farmer had been referred to four or five other banks.
"The only one that he had actually continued onto other paperwork
with was Fountain City Park Bank," the agent said. Farmer had assumed the attorney's identity at both banks. And he also had represented in writing to both banks that Wayne Farmer had nearly $6 million in a Merrill Lynch account. While the Merrill Lynch document looked genuine, officials at the brokerage firm confirmed no such account existed and that the account number Farmer provided was bogus. But Beck's investigation didn't end there. When he was taken into custody, Farmer had about 35 credit cards on him, Beck said, which instantly caused the FBI to be suspicious of credit card fraud. The paper trail By the time Farmer had been arrested by the FBI in Knoxville, U.S. Postal Inspectors in Kansas City had been investigating Farmer for at least three years for devising a scheme to defraud women he'd been corresponding with through personals ads in tabloid newspapers. "Farmer initiated correspondence with some of these women while in federal custody as a result of a mail fraud conviction in 1981," states a report stemming from that investigation. As part of that investigation, now retired Postal Inspector Dennis Bowden seized 237 letters addressed to Farmer at addresses in Kansas. One of those letters contained $6,000 in U.S. Postal money orders purchased at a Navy base in Rota, Spain, and made payable to Farmer. The woman who sent the money, Maria, had cashed in her savings bonds. "I got Maria her money back," Bowden said. "The last thing I told (Farmer) was I knew who he was and what he was doing and I wouldn't let him do it again. I don't think he took me seriously. That case stuck in my craw. Who his victims were was very irritating to me." The investigation also found that a woman from England sent Farmer $80,000. He used about $46,000 of that to buy a 1996 Lincoln Town Car - the same vehicle he was in possession of when the FBI arrested him. Because Farmer swore under oath during a court appearance in Knoxville on Feb. 14, 2001, that he didn't own a vehicle, authorities added a perjury charge against him. Another letter seized by Bowden led the inspector to a widow in Cullman, Ala., and her son. Farmer had started dating the widow in early 1999 and called a credit card company to have his name added as an authorized user to one of the son's accounts. "(Farmer) called them and pretended like he was me," the widow's son said. "He said he was me and wanted Mr. Farmer added to his account." Later, Farmer submitted a change of address form to have the bills sent to an address in Hawkins County in East Tennessee. He married a widow living at that address in April 2000. It wasn't until the Cullman widow's son went to use the credit card to buy his wife a Christmas present that he learned there was $43 available in the account. "I hit the ceiling," the son said. Because Farmer had mailed the change of address form to East Tennessee, authorities could bring a mail fraud charge against him here. When U.S. District Judge Leon Jordan sentenced Farmer on Sept. 20 for that charge and four others involving his actions at the banks and with the car, the judge ordered him to pay the company about $6,500 in restitution for the fraudulent charges. "I'm still trying to straighten out the credit cards," said the son of the Cullman widow. And the Hawkins County widow, who had her marriage to Farmer annulled in May, is still getting calls from collection agencies seeking Farmer. A more than three-page report outlines the thousands of dollars owed by Farmer on various credit card accounts. "The unfortunate thing is that those credit card lenders ... probably will not be able to collect the money," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Cook, who prosecuted the case. "He's spent it." Preying on trust Bowden said Farmer and other con men succeed because the victims are too embarrassed to press charges. "Some denied they had ever written to him," Bowden said. "Some were embarrassed. Some had since married." The Hawkins County widow decided she needed to take a stand and she spoke to Judge Jordan during Farmer's sentencing. "I fully believe that he will do it again and there will be other victims," she said. To reduce the chances of Farmer carrying out more scams while serving his sentence, Jordan ordered the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to monitor all of his mail not involving legal matters. Cook knew most of Farmer's criminal convictions were too old to count against him at the September sentencing. So he successfully fought for a higher sentence than called for by sentencing guidelines. "When those older convictions are part of a pattern that is as clear as it was in this case then they're more than just some old stray ... convictions, they are a strong indicator that the person is going to engage in this continued pattern of criminal activity," he said. It'll be about five years before Farmer, who has appealed his sentence, gets out of prison again. But that doesn't mean his legal troubles are over.
Bowden said he contacted the Air Force about some of the claims Farmer
made about his military service. And Peter Loewenberg, a prosecutor for
the U.S. Justice Department in Washington, D.C., said his office is
investigating whether charges should be filed against Farmer. He wouldn't elaborate on what the charges might be, but the investigation Bowden started in Kansas City is still open, others said. Farmer also has two theft charges waiting for him in Cullman stemming from two incidents in 2000 in which he's accused of leaving an auto dealership without paying for repair work on the Lincoln Town Car. "We'll extradite him when he gets out of the federal penitentiary," said Cullman County District Attorney Len Brooks. Federal authorities can only speculate as to why, after repeatedly being caught and sent to prison, Farmer continues to masquerade as someone he isn't. "I don't think he knows anything other than these stories that he's made up," Beck said. "He's been telling these same stories ... the same lies time and time again. I think he's found that's what works for him." Cook said people are fundamentally trusting. "And you have people who are like defendant Farmer who will prey on that trust," Cook said. "It's that simple." Only Farmer knows for sure how many victims there have been. But Cook knows he didn't just victimize elderly widows, a doctor and a lawyer with a similar name. "He victimized everybody he could," Cook said. Laura Ayo may be reached at 865-342-6341 or ayo@knews.com.
This series is based on interviews with people who knew, fell Copyright 2001 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co.
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