Accused swindler living it up in Bali
Wilbert Ho and Carol Comeau weren’t pleased to learn that Barry Bellefontaine, a Honolulu investment adviser who took their money and skipped town nearly 12 years ago, is now selling luxury homes in Bali, Indonesia, and serving as president of the local tennis club.
After Bellefontaine and his wife sailed off in a 50-foot-yacht in July 1995, his investment company went belly-up, owing $4.2 million to Ho, Comeau and about 90 other investors and creditors.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the 56-year-old native of Canada was a significant player in Hawai’i’s investment community.
Through investment seminars, newspaper advertisements and his weekly radio shows, Bellefontaine’s company, Asian American Corp., bought and sold rare coins and precious metals for scores of loyal customers. Many of those customers were retirees who had entrusted Bellefontaine to hold the coins they bought.
Bellefontaine once boasted that his company handled more than $40 million in business from its start-up in 1985 to its eventual shutdown in 1995. His newspaper ads also claimed that his investment advice generated average returns of 50 percent or more in less than a year.
But for investors such as Ho and Comeau, those returns were a sham.
Ho said he lost tens of thousands of dollars after he purchased more than a dozen rare silver coins from Bellefontaine, who told him he could resell the coins for double Ho’s original investment. Ho said he handed over the coins to Bellefontaine, who disappeared before returning the coins or repaying him.
“I’m bitter about that investment, and I’d like to get my money back,” Ho said. “I would settle for half of it.”
Comeau also entrusted her money with Bellefontaine. The Downtown resident, who met Bellefontaine at one of his Waikiki investment seminars, said she initially made money on gold coins she purchased from Asian American.
But Comeau said she gave Bellefontaine a $13,000 coin for safekeeping when he disappeared.
“That was a fair amount of money for me,” she said.
Since leaving Hawai’i, Bellefontaine has started a new life in Bali, where he sells real estate and goes by the name Lawrence Bellefontaine.
According to his company’s Web site, Bellefontaine “sailed to Bali 10 years ago with his wife … on their yacht” and is now one of Bali’s largest real estate brokers and developers.
His company, PT Bali Affordable Lifestyles International, said its clients include several multi-millionaires, senior officials with the U.S. and Australian consulates and several hotel executives.
PT Bali’s Web site also notes that Bellefontaine is a frequent speaker at investment seminars and is the president of a local tennis club that caters to foreigners in Bali.
The Web site makes no mention of Bellefontaine’s past in Hawai’i, his background in rare coin investments nor of his past legal woes here.
Reached at his home in Bali, Bellefontaine declined to discuss his time in Hawai’i and the reasons he left the Islands.
He referred all questions to his attorney. Peter Howell, the lawyer who represented Bellefontaine in the past, could not be reached for comment.
“I prefer not to talk to you. The last time I talked to you guys it made a lot of problems for me,” Bellefontaine said before hanging up his phone.
James DiGeorgia, editor of the Boca Raton, Fla.-based investment newsletter Gold & Energy Advisor, recalled that the collapse of Asian American Corp. was relatively big news in the rare coin industry in the early 1990s.
DiGeorgia wrote an article in September 1993 that criticized the high markups that Bellefontaine charged his customers for gold coin investments. At the time, Asian American was charging its customers $925 for half-ounce gold coins called American Eagles when the wholesale price for those coins was about $460, DiGeorgia said.
DiGeorgia said he is surprised that Bellefontaine has resurfaced and is keeping a relatively high profile in Bali after skipping out on so many of his local customers.
“Anybody doing business with this guy should know he has never stepped up to the plate. He left people hanging and never paid restitution,” DiGeorgia said. “He defrauded people of millions of dollars. This was a terrible event in the numismatics industry.”
Those lost millions will probably never be recovered.
Before Bellefontaine left the Islands, the state Office of Consumer Protection had filed a civil lawsuit against him in June 1995, alleging that he misled scores of customers. In August 1996, state Circuit Judge Allene Suemori ordered Bellefontaine and his firm to pay $4 million in fines to the state for misleading investors.
The Office of Consumer Protection, led by staff attorney Jeffrey Brunton, recovered about $100,000 by suing a Mainland trust company that held some of the investors’ coins. But most of the $4 million judgment went uncollected because the Office of Consumer Protection later discovered that Bellefontaine did not own any real property in the U.S. that they could seize.
The FBI also began a theft investigation into Bellefontaine in 1995 but never pressed charges. The feds eventually closed the case and are unlikely to open a new case because the five-year statute of limitations for theft has already run out.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Les Osborne, who was assigned to the case, declined comment because no criminal charges were filed.
“It’s really outrageous that someone can get away with something like this,” said Stephen Levins, director of the Office of Consumer Protection.
“It’s truly unfortunate,” Levins said, “that if in fact he engaged in criminal conduct that he was able to skirt the criminal process by fleeing for parts unknown.”
Rick Daysog
Source: Honolulu Advertiser
1 comment April 16th, 2007
