Ellsworth’s Capers During Papal Visit Feed Feds’ Anger

Call him a schemer, a dreamer, a big talker. Call him a shady operator, a global operator, a lawbreaker. All of these have been used to describe John Clifford Ellsworth. By repute, the 42-year-old convicted felon also is a spinner of tall tales who has a yen for attaching himself to celebrated events.

A globe-trotter who has been in Los Angeles less than four years, Ellsworth has bragged of a mysterious past that supposedly included roles in President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China and in secret negotiations for hostages in Iran and Lebanon. He testified last year that he managed the Rolling Stones rock band for five years.

Some law enforcement people here tend to take these claims with a whole shaker of salt.

But in the eyes of a growing cadre of Ellsworth watchers, the promoter outdid himself playing big shot during the two-day visit of Pope John Paul II to Los Angeles last September.

Ellsworth managed to inject himself among the volunteer army helping the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to lay on the hospitality, but he was not your run-of-the-mill volunteer. In pursuit of papal glamour, a bankruptcy court has been told, Ellsworth bounced checks and piled more than $20,000 in bad debts on one of his companies.

A particularly intriguing item: a worthless check for $1,073.63 that he used to buy Kentucky Fried Chicken for scores of U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to protecting the Pope.

In feeding the hungry feds, Ellsworth also obligated his now bankrupt U.S. Coal Corp. for hundreds of dollars for provender from Greenblatt’s Delicatessen in Hollywood and from Sarno’s Caffee Dell’Opera Restaurant in the Los Feliz district. He even stiffed Winchell’s Donuts for a paltry $16 worth of doughnuts for lawmen, according to the testimony.

Other expenses that Ellsworth failed to pay included about $32,000 to the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, of which an estimated $20,000 was for rooms during the papal sojourn. Biltmore manager Richard Delaney told the Los Angeles Times recently that “we have an arrangement with them for payment,” but he did not give details.

Sensitive Topic

The Kentucky Fried Chicken caper has since become a sensitive topic for the Secret Service.

That’s because two months after the papal visit Ellsworth was named as the key figure in a state Corporations Department suit alleging misuse of $60 million in pension funds by Commercial Acceptance Corp.

The state disclosed at the time that Ellsworth had a record of two larceny convictions in New York. Last February, Ellsworth pleaded guilty to a massive “check-kiting” scam against Sanwa Bank.

Lawyers and accountants who have been laboring for months to unravel Ellsworth’s business affairs are bemused by his big spending habits, revealed to include hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to car rental agencies, restaurants, check-cashing companies and Las Vegas hotels. There also is the $45,000 item for “stretching” a leased limousine and $105,000 owed to the city of Adelanto for providing facilities for the free High Desert Music Festival rock concert in Riverside County in July, 1986.

Just how Ellsworth got involved in helping the Secret Service during the Pope’s visit also is far from clear.

But Wally McGuire of San Francisco, an outside consultant who coordinated the papal visit, said Ellsworth called and wanted to know how he could help. As it turned out, “he did nothing but offered plenty” to the Los Angeles Catholic archdiocese for the event, McGuire said.

‘Minimal Part’

He said the church turned down Ellsworth on offers of hotel rooms, automobiles, stage platforms and even facilities to videotape the entire event because “we had no track record with him.”

Father Terrance Fleming, a professor at St. John’s Seminary who was the archdiocese’s local coordinator for the Pope’s visit, said he “vaguely” remembers Ellsworth among the 5,000 individuals with whom he dealt but maintained that “he had a minimal part.”

Stan Belitz, a Secret Service agent in Los Angeles who worked on the papal visit, denied that the agency had “dealings” with Ellsworth and said he “has been dropping our name around.” The agent was identified in testimony as the one who handled arrangements with Ellsworth.

He referred a news inquiry to Secret Service spokesman William Corbett in Washington, who said Ellsworth in fact had arranged to pick up and deliver chicken dinners for a flock of agents awaiting a military flight out of Los Angeles.

“He showed up about an hour after departure,” Corbett said. “The agents were gone. The Secret Service was not paying. Each agent was paying four or five dollars. But they were gone. They went hungry.”

Corbett recalled that Ellsworth was referred to the agency by church authorities.

“One of the best ways to describe him is an opportunist,” he said.

A former employee of Ellsworth’s solely owned U.S. Coal Corp., Louis J. Janda, jolted lawyers at a deposition last January when he listed among unsecured debts of U.S. Coal $11,000 owed to Kentucky Fried Chicken. He testified that the food ended up at the New Otani Hotel downtown, headquarters for the Secret Service detail.

Asked why the entrepreneur was buying food for Secret Service agents, Janda testified: “I can’t say--I can only say (it was) for P.R. (public relations).”

The Kentucky Fried Chicken folks say they only know of $1,073 that Ellsworth spent with them.

Debbie Arnold, regional manager for Collins Food International, the Los Angeles franchisee of Kentucky Fried Chicken, recalled that “originally we were going to do $20,000 of catering for these people” at Dodger Stadium and the Coliseum, sites of the major papal events, but the plans fell through several weeks before the events.

However, Prentice Slayton, Collins’ district manager, remembered a “giant hassle” with a number of Secret Service agents gathered at the company’s Westchester chicken outlet to oversee preparation of dozens of dinners ordered for Secret Service agents at the airport.

Slayton said he still keeps U.S. Coal’s $1,073 check, which Ellsworth signed and which turned out to be written on a closed bank account. Slayton said he was assured by someone at U.S. Coal’s offices that the check would be made good, but it never was. He added that “they had the audacity to say some of the officers got sick” and payment would be delayed for that reason.

According to testimony taken in the Commercial Acceptance case, an associate said Ellsworth had boasted of meeting the Pope at Dodger Stadium. Another associate reports that a member of Ellsworth’s party at the Coliseum sought to shake hands with the Pope at the Coliseum and was escorted out by security guards.

Two months after the big event, the Corporations Department obtained court receivership over the assets of Ellsworth and two top officers of Commercial Acceptance Corp., Barry Gray and David Facciani.

The department told a court of Commercial Acceptance’s chaotic records and its lending of many millions of dollars to enterprises owned by Ellsworth and other affiliates. A small army of attorneys and accountants has been working for several months trying to salvage some of the investors’ money. A federal criminal investigation is going on at the same time.

According to state regulators, U.S. Coal’s sole source of operating funds was loans from Commercial Acceptance, which got most of its funds from corporate notes that it sold to pension funds. U.S. Coal’s bankruptcy papers show that it owes $12.4 million to Commercial Acceptance, which also is in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding.

The Commercial Acceptance fiasco began the downfall of Ellsworth. In January, he was arrested by the FBI and charged with taking part in an elaborate scheme that defrauded Sanwa Bank of $250,000.

Since then he has been ordered held in federal custody without bail on grounds of the high probability that he would flee the country rather than face trial. Ellsworth pleaded guilty in February and has been awaiting sentencing.

Now, in what promises to be an exotic new chapter of Ellsworth lore, he has been taken to New York under subpoena to appear as a government witness in a major Mafia racketeering trial.

The federal prosecutor in New York, Walter Mack, said in a telephone interview that he is under a judge’s “gag order” and is not allowed to comment on the case, including Ellsworth’s role.

According to a reporter for the New York Times, which is seeking to lift the court order, the case involves nine members of the Gambino crime family accused of committing a number of murders as part of their enterprise. Several skeptical Los Angeles lawyers say they are curious to learn whether Ellsworth has promoted another tall tale or if he knows something substantive about the New York case.

Ellsworth has left trails around Europe--not to mention a carpet of bogus checks--according to records in the civil cases involving him and his stable of companies in Los Angeles.

In recent times, he purportedly got a Saudi Arabian prince named Abdul Aziz to join in developing a proposed Islamic cultural center in the desert near Los Angeles. The project didn’t get off the ground, perhaps because the prince didn’t come up with $500,000 in cash--only a promissory note. The note is part of the dubious assets of U.S. Coal.

A number of other Ellsworth deals sowed in Europe failed to flower, and two of his associates are facing charges there. Luxembourg authorities are investigating two Ellsworth-affiliated firms that purported to insure the securities held by Commercial Acceptance investors.

‘Luxembourgers’ and Paint

Another of Ellsworth’s schemes, according to Janda’s testimony, was a joint venture for a Brazilian eucalyptus plantation “for pharmaceutical purposes.”

One of his other associates, Cynthia Estrada, said in a deposition that Ellsworth told her of a plan to open a hamburger business in Luxembourg and call its product “luxembourgers.”

She also said he told her of a deal with a painter who supposedly invented a paint to make airplanes invisible to radar, as well as a scheme to fish for tuna from helicopters.

Last May, before his troubles surfaced, Ellsworth testified grandiosely about his global activities and gave some curious testimony about his life before coming to Los Angeles. His deposition was taken in a dispute involving another company he formerly controlled, Hughes Steel & Tube Corp., which was in bankruptcy.

When attorney Gary E. Klausner asked Ellsworth for all his business addresses, he replied: “I can’t even recite them. . . . Do you want addresses in Athens, Cairo, Egypt, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg?”

He said, when asked if he was always known as John Ellsworth: “OK. If you really want to be technical, for a period of five years when I managed the Rolling Stones--my full name is John Clifford Jaymes Ellsworth . . . so the stage name was John Jaymes,” which he spelled out.

Ellsworth also said he lived in New York for about five years, adding: “The rest of the time I was overseas.” Asked where, he said: “I was commuting between Egypt, Luxembourg and Switzerland and Yugoslavia.”

Later, he said he was born in New York. He said part of his youth was spent in Cuba, Japan “and a few other places,” explaining that his father “was in the military awhile.” He also claimed that he attended, but conceded that he did not graduate from, the famed High School for Performing Arts in New York and later took extension courses from the University of Rochester. He said he was twice married and was in the process of getting his second divorce.

When Ellsworth was asked his business background since high school, his attorney instructed him not to answer further questions on the topic. He also declined to give his Social Security number.

Melinda Brun, senior trial counsel in Los Angeles for the state Corporations Department, said she has been unsuccessful in efforts to learn the details of the New York cases in which he pleaded guilty after being charged with grand larceny.

In a brief telephone interview last November about his criminal record, Ellsworth said that, more than seven years ago, an associate in a business venture left the country and “left me holding the bag.” He said he was given probation, adding that “I had my wrist slapped.”