Man’s 28 Identities Confuse $250,000 Loan Fraud Case

A slight man in his mid-30s, with dark, wavy hair and a wisp of a mustache, stood in the dock in Los Angeles Municipal Court on Thursday, accused of trying to swindle a Southland bank out of $250,000 in a deal involving a Westside doctor and a Brentwood house with a spectacular view.

The man’s criminal lawyer said he knows the defendant as Thomas Townsend Stancil. His civil attorney said the suspect goes by the name of Brian T. Hardy. But a bemused investigator for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said authorities, despite their best efforts, have no idea who the man really is.

What they do know, said Robert W. Ewen, supervising investigator for the district attorney’s major frauds unit, is that the man maintained at least 28 different “identity packets,” filled with passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates and even more esoteric documents--library cards, aviation credentials and Federal Communications Commission licenses, for example.

The photographs on all the papers depict the same person--the man who was in court Thursday--but each set of documents, Ewen said, bears a different name.

Neither Stancil-Hardy’s criminal nor civil attorney offered an explanation Thursday for the identity files, which were seized last Friday, the day the defendant was arrested, at the home on Kenter Way in Brentwood and at an office the suspect maintains in Marina del Rey.

The defendant’s criminal lawyer, Stephen C. Rasak, said that the driver’s licenses contained in the files all had expired.

“I think it’s real hard to use an expired driver’s license to perpetrate a fraud,” Rasak said.

Of the multiple identities, T. J. Pantaleo, the civil lawyer, said: “That, I think, we need to conduct our own investigation on.”

Pantaleo said the events that led to his client’s arrest involve what is essentially a business dispute. Now, the lawyer added, “it’s escalated into this, and that’s unfortunate for both parties.”

According to Pantaleo, the man he knows as Brian T. Hardy is a real estate investor and syndicator who has lived in the Los Angeles area for 10 years or so. Hardy, Pantaleo said, entered into a business deal more than a year ago with a Westside physician, Dr. Wallace A. Goodstein.

Goodstein, Pantaleo said, wanted Hardy to live in, and manage the renovation of, a two-story house in Brentwood that the doctor was planning to purchase as an investment. The property, Pantaleo said, is atop a hill that affords a panoramic view of the ocean and the Westside.

Hardy agreed to the deal and moved in, Pantaleo said.

According to the lawyer, Goodstein later said that he would allow Hardy to purchase a 50% interest in the property. Pantaleo said that Hardy paid Goodstein for a half-interest in the house, but that Goodstein refused to add Hardy’s name to the deed.

That is not the way Goodstein tells the story.

According to the physician’s lawyer, James P. Herzog, Hardy never gave Goodstein the money for an interest in the house.

Instead, authorities believe, Hardy forged Goodstein’s signature on a second trust deed that Hardy used to secure a $250,000 loan from the Bank of San Pedro. The bank contends that the loan is now in default.

Different Version

Hardy, according to Pantaleo, says that Goodstein actually signed the trust deed.

Both the suspect and Goodstein have civil lawsuits against one another pending in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The trust deed and one of the passports found in the Brentwood home are the basis for the counts against Hardy (or Stancil)--grand theft, filing a forged document and two counts of forgery. The defendant has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

A low-level bank employee who had a role in approving the loan to Hardy later quit his job and went to work for the defendant, according to Ewen.

The employee, Marci Grey Stone, who appeared in court Thursday, told authorities that she has taken out a loan to pay the $10,000 premium on Hardy’s bail bond. The balance of the bond is to be secured with property pledged by another of Hardy’s friends.

Bail Posting Expected

Rasak, the criminal lawyer, said he expects the client he knows as Thomas Stancil to post his $100,000 bail by today.

Despite suggestions to the contrary made by the district attorney’s office, Rasak said he expects that Stancil (or Hardy) will show up for a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 24.

Officials in the district attorney’s office are not the only ones who remain baffled by the defendant’s multiple identities.

“I sort of think the house is secondary to whatever the guy is doing,” said Herzog, the doctor’s attorney. “Whatever that is.”