‘Ultimate Con Man’ Charged in Lottery Scheme

Charles Lawrence--said by state law officers to be an ace con man with at least 20 aliases--pleaded not guilty Wednesday in Beverly Hills Municipal Court to charges that he used faked California Lottery tickets in a scam that also involved women bartenders, horses and a glib way with words.

Lawrence, believed to be 48, was carrying four faked $100,000 winning tickets when he was arrested Saturday in a downtown Los Angeles hotel by an undercover woman operative, said Bob Fleming, a security agent for the California Lottery.

“We’ve handled a number of altered ticket cases,” Fleming said, “but this is the first scam of this kind.”

The lottery scam, according to agents, worked this way: Lawrence approached his victim, usually a woman bartender or a hostess, showed her a convincing-looking $100,000 winning lottery ticket and then offered her the lucky ducat if she would advance him $1,000 to bet on a “sure-thing” horse running at a local track.

When he tried it on a bartender at the Mayfair Hotel last Friday, she got suspicious, agents said, and arranged to meet the well-dressed, middle-aged man the next day at another hotel, the nearby Hilton. The bartender told a hotel security guard, who alerted California Lottery’s special agents.

Fleming said Lawrence was arrested by a woman undercover agent posing as a friend of the bartender.

Fleming said Lawrence has a 15-page rap sheet dating to the 1950s and is believed to have worked his latest scheme in Sacramento, San Francisco and San Diego as well as Los Angeles. He has been sought as a California parole violator for the last three years.

In Sacramento, lottery security chief Lou Ritter called the suspect “the ultimate con man . . . very glib,” and said he is believed to have been using the scam at least since last February, when he was using the name Bob Passmore. Several weeks later, Ritter said, a man matching Passmore’s description used the scam to get $600 from a woman bartender in West Hollywood’s Hyatt Regency.

The suspect was arraigned Wednesday before Beverly Hills Municipal Judge Charles D. Boags.

When the judge asked the suspect his name, he replied, “Charles Russell.” Deputy Dist. Atty. Connie Bugh said the complaint listed him as Charles Lawrence. He is also known as Robert Lawrence. The suspect then told the judge his name was Charles Lawrence Russell.

The judge decided that for the record he will be known as Charles Lawrence and set May 19 for a preliminary hearing on charges of grand theft, attempted grand theft and possessing altered lottery tickets.

Since the lottery started last October, more than 40 people have been charged with turning in forged tickets.