Woman Pleads Guilty in Oil Well Scam
A Reseda woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping her Malibu boyfriend swindle investors out of nearly half a million dollars by selling them “partnerships” in phony oil wells.
Ann Borrowdale, 35, in pleading guilty in federal court to three counts of mail fraud, acknowledged that she controlled several bank accounts opened with the investors’ money and mailed contracts to them.
Operating in 1984 and 1985 under such fictitious names as Delta Resources or Falcon Resources, Borrowdale and her boyfriend, Brian Joseph Cullen, telephoned potential investors and told them that geologists had found oil on the investor’s land and offered to found a partnership to extract it, prosecutor David Katz said.
Cullen, 40, of Malibu, pleaded guilty to five counts of mail fraud last Friday. The pair face sentencing before U. S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie in January.
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