Playboy of the Coast Highway : ‘Gigolo’ Mac Duffy, Charged With Theft, Says He Intends to ‘Pay These Ladies Back’

She was driving down Coast Highway on a sunny Newport Beach day, wondering why all the good men were married or unemployed. And then he pulled alongside her, darkly handsome at the wheel of a red Porsche Carrera.

He fixed his eyes on her and, with a half smile, asked her to race. She declined, but he continued to flirt. She finally pulled over. He said his name was Mac Duffy. Would she have lunch with him? She couldn’t, but invited him over to dinner. He followed her home so he could find his way back that night. During the drive, she giggled to herself: “I can’t believe I’m doing this!”

He was a pro golfer, he said, a successful one. And who would argue? Besides the Porsche, he had a pair of Rolls-Royces and a Mercedes-Benz. He wore Armani jackets and a diamond-beveled Rolex watch. He got massages daily and breakfasted most mornings at the Bouzy Rouge Cafe in Newport Beach.

Over several weeks, Duffy, a Scotland native, talked in detail of his business investing in the European stock market. He oozed wealth, although he explained he lived in a modest Newport Beach apartment because of his extensive traveling. He listened over lunches and dinners as she revealed the problems of her divorce and of trying to raise two teen-agers as a single mother.

When Duffy explained weeks later that he could invest her $16,000 savings in the stock market for a quick 34% return, she jumped. But when she asked for her money back, prosecutors would later allege in court, Duffy made excuses, then vanished.

A private investigator she hired would eventually find him. At the time Newport Beach police arrested him, he was wearing a $1,000 coat, a Movado watch and $800 crocodile shoes. He had $1.36 in his pocket.

Police and prosecutors say the Mac Duffy case is fraught with bizarre twists: his brazen highway flirting, the extent to which he played Mr. Rich, his quicky marriage to one victim in a failed attempt to keep her from testifying.

And, in perhaps the strangest turn of events, only one of the four women he is charged with bilking of more than $60,000 reportedly wants him in prison. Two of them want him found guilty, but free so he can pay them back.

“I have never seen anything like it,” said Tom Martin, a private investigator from Orange who tracked Duffy down.

In the months since Duffy’s Dec. 18 arrest, dozens of women have called reporting a total of $150,000 they lost to Duffy, according to Newport Beach police detective Mike Ramos, a white-collar crime specialist who has led the Duffy investigation. “And those are just the ones willing to give me their names and background.”

Some called just to say that Duffy “tried that Coast Highway thing on me but I didn’t go for it,” he said.

A dozen women attended his Jan. 26 preliminary hearing, one traveling from Salt Lake City. Authorities said women claiming Duffy welshed on loans called from Southern California, the Bay Area, Texas, Florida, “all over the place,” said Ronald L. Cafferty, the deputy district attorney who filed criminal charges against Duffy. But he stressed that, because it is not against the law to welsh on a loan, police did not investigate the validity of those women’s calls. “The problem is this: In our great country, it is not a crime to fail to pay back your debts,” Ramos said.

There is a fine line between reneging on a loan and borrowing money you never intended to repay, but prosecutors have charged in court that Duffy allegedly crossed it in four cases. By posing as a stockbroker, Cafferty said, Duffy obtained the women’s money by fraud, constituting grand theft.

Duffy concedes that he has not repaid money he “borrowed” for his golf career and what he called his “life style of a playboy.” He has admitted in interviews with The Times that he lied about being a wealthy stockbroker.

“I did a little conning here and there. . . . The word gigolo isn’t totally out of the question,” he said. He acknowledged that he needs “some help,” including therapy to control his desire for “material things.”

But he insisted that he always intended “to pay these ladies back.”

So, as he awaits a May 8 trial on grand theft charges in Orange County Superior Court, Duffy, 28, is reportedly trying to earn money teaching golf at an Orlando-area club.

Duffy, whose attorney implored him to stop talking to reporters, finally did in January. But his wife, whom he still owes $16,000 plus the $4,000 bail she posted for him, keeps in touch with him by phone.

“He’s trying to turn his life around and do the right thing but it’s hard to get a job with all this publicity,” said Sylvianne Lestringant, who married Duffy in Las Vegas the night before his preliminary hearing to avoid testifying, but had to anyway because the alleged theft occurred before their nuptials.

“He’s going to pay all these people back. I don’t even know who all these people are. The ones I know about are enough,” she said. “I’m getting harassing phone calls from all over and I just don’t want to know any more.”

Duffy’s routine was, said Ramos, “like a full-time job. . . . He just went to work on Coast Highway.”

During a flurry of activity last fall, police, prosecutors, public records and interviews with victims provided the following account of how he operated.

In all four Orange County cases, Duffy allegedly met the women as they drove along the shoreline, past beach cottages and the moneyed Newport Bay. It was here that police say he may have met hundreds of women between late July and December.

Whether he was in a Rolls-Royce, a Porsche or a Mercedes, “it was the car that hooked them in,” Ramos said. “It was that first impression of wealth. Who knows how many hours a day he drove back and forth. He was a good salesman, and he did what most good salesmen do. He played the numbers game. One out of 100, one out of 50. If you knock on enough doors you may get, ‘No, no, no.’ But eventually, you are going to get a ‘yes.’

“He would flirt with them as they drove down the road,” Ramos said. “He’d be smiling and waving, and point or wave to get them to pull over.” He asked one victim to drag race, another to pick up her car phone so he could call her.

Once they stopped and talked to him, victims said Duffy would ask them to go to the movies, or lunch--right then. In one case he asked a woman to come with him golfing in Carlsbad. None of them went on these impulsive dates, although they said they exchanged telephone numbers or made plans for a rendezvous.

First dates with Duffy were almost always for lunch in safe and public places. Money would not come up for several weeks. By then, Duffy had already learned the woman’s financial situation, and had “read her personal life as well,” prosecutor Cafferty said.

If a woman needed to hear how attractive she was, that is what Duffy told her. If she was in financial straits, he offered to help pay her rent, or explained how he could invest her savings in the stock market, Cafferty and Ramos said.

“With one woman, he even said he was concerned that she loved him for something other than his money,” Ramos said. “Was he romancing them? I think he uses whatever is necessary to gain someone’s trust, whether it was proving how rich and successful he is or telling them, ‘You’re special’ or ‘prove to me you are not after my money.’ ”

“They believed him--his show--and that’s where they messed up. It’s that simple. They ran across a professional con, and he won. Once he’s worked his magic, it’s hard to sit back and say, ‘How could they have fallen for it?’ ” Ramos said.

Only his new bride, Lestringant, would be quoted for this story. The others either no longer wanted to be in the limelight or were interviewed on condition that their names be withheld.

“I have testified against him, I have been interviewed already. I lost my job and I am in debt,” said one of the four Orange County women, a Laguna Niguel resident who lost $38,000 in what she thought was a stock investment with Duffy. “To get on the witness stand you are like being raped. And I have to do it again still if I want him convicted. I want to know how many more times I have to be victimized?”

Added Detective Ramos: “You have to understand how hard it is to have come forward and let the whole world know that you fell for this guy’s act. It’s not like they were robbed at gunpoint on the street. These people played a role in their own victimization.”

All four women testified for the prosecution at Duffy’s January preliminary hearing.

Based on their testimony, Judge Christopher W. Strople found that there was sufficient evidence to order the blue-eyed golfer to stand trial on three of the four charges. The fourth grand theft charge has since been refiled against Duffy.

His bail at that time was increased to $40,000 after prosecutor Cafferty told Strople: “Since this case was filed, I have talked to a number of other people who have been victimized by Mr. Duffy. . . .”

Those victims, Cafferty said, include an unnamed Utah woman who loaned Duffy $15,000 for his golf career, and a Ventura County doctor from whom Duffy borrowed $20,000 for a car plus cash to travel the golf circuit. Cafferty also mentioned a woman now in bankruptcy who allegedly lost $100,000 in charges by Duffy to a credit card Duffy “got her to obtain for him.”

“We didn’t file that because initially it smacked more of a loan to him,” Cafferty told the judge. “In the interim we got all the information from (the) Utah and Ventura (victims). I understand there are some people in Texas who have been defrauded of some money. This thing is turning into a bigger thing than we initially thought. I think the limited evidence that we induced in this proceeding is sufficient to show we have got a con man here and on a wide scale.”

Like so many alleged victims of cons and frauds, most of the people who loaned or invested money with Duffy did not go to authorities initially because they believed they were less victims of crime than their own bad judgement.

But four Orange County women--a 39-year-old Hughes Aircraft Co. administrator; a 35-year-old computer saleswoman from South County; a 30-year-old stockbroker, and 41-year-old Lestringant, who works at her ex-husband’s tool company--saw it differently.

So they went to the police or a private investigator to get their money back, and finally, they went to the courthouse.

At 30, she is the youngest and biggest loser among the women who have testified Duffy took their money.

As she testified in January, she is a certified public accountant and stockbroker by trade, forced now by her losses to work as a consultant from her Laguna Niguel condominium, which she is trying to sell to survive.

“Do I look to you like somebody who couldn’t find a date?” she asked with a smile, brushing her long shiny brown hair from her face, pointing to her trim body in black leggings and a leotard. “I had a boyfriend at the time I met Mac.”

That day, she was driving her Mazda home from work when Duffy cruised up in his Mercedes and began flirting as they progressed to each stoplight. He finally motioned her to pull over, and she did. “I figured, ‘Hey, I’m not going anywhere besides home anyway.’ ”

He asked her to have cocktails with him. She declined, but met him that Friday night for dinner at Tortilla Flats in Laguna Beach.

She said she found Duffy interesting, but was not physically attracted to him. “He is sort of chubby, and not athletic at all. He seemed, oh, flaccid. I work out every single day.

“But I thought he would be someone good to know. I know a variety of different types of people and we all network things. A friend of mine helps me with real estate, I do some accounting for him. I thought he would be interesting to have as a friend. But if he’d told me he was an unemployed golfer, I would have got some golf lessons out of it and done his taxes. So I was using him, in a way, too.”

Despite her lack of romantic interest, she testified that she continued to meet Duffy about once a week for lunch. She said she considered him a “good friend.”

One day he drove her to Corona del Mar, to show her the house he said he owned. It was a deception he allegedly would pull off on at least two women. He pointed to a gray stone, castlelike home a few blocks from the ocean, and said he was renting it to a family because it was too large for him alone. He walked her through the grounds, pointing out the cobblestone here he’d imported from Scotland, the landscaping touch there.

She was on the verge of changing careers, and planned to return to school to become a psychologist. She had a $15,000 mutual fund on which she intented to live while working part time.

Duffy, she said, “hit me at a weak time in my life, a time when I had low self-esteem and wanted a drastic change in my life. . . . It was pure greed. I thought, ‘Hey, I better get on this gravy train.’ ”

She said he repeatedly told her she was living in “squalor,” that she would never have anything more than “a measly $40 grand a year,” a two-bedroom condo and a pedestrian sports car if she didn’t act boldly, and invest. It takes money to make money, he would say. Her investment would be so meager, he said, that he was going to lump it with his own big bucks.

She testified that he didn’t sign a note for what he said were tax purposes, but she had “documentation” in the way of bank withdrawal slips and notes to herself.

“Don’t you chase the almighty dollar? Living in Newport Beach and Laguna Niguel we want a better car, a better house, better clothes, more money. More, more more for the life style,” the woman said.

She testified that Duffy persuaded her to invest her $15,000 mutual fund in what was to be a very liquid stock investment, money on which she would see an average 34% return in just three months. The mutual money was slow in arriving from Boston, and Duffy pressed her to come up with it because the window of opportunity to invest it was closing.

She took a $10,000 advance on a credit card to get the needed cash, and said she gave it to Duffy. When the mutual fund money arrived, she said Duffy persuaded her to invest $9,000 of that, too, in the stock market.

A few days later, at a South Coast Plaza jeweler, she said Duffy fell for a $15,000 diamond-beveled Rolex. Because he said his father would be furious with him for buying such a frivolous item, Duffy allegedly asked her to purchase the watch and he would repay her plus $1,000, when her bill arrived. She did.

All of this was a gamble, she knew, like any high-risk investment.

“I was not sitting here waiting for a guaranteed return,” she said. “All this was right about the time the stock market crashed 200 points. If he’d come to me and said, ‘Well we lost it all,’ and had some documentation, I would have accepted it.

“I saw it all the time in my work,” she said. “People doubling up on their investment. Out of fear of losing the first $50, you invest another $50. I had this feeling that if I alienated him, he already had my money. It’s the fear of recognizing your first mistake.” Eventually she did. She testified that she asked Duffy for her money back. Over the next few days she said he repeatedly put her off with excuses about the difficulty in withdrawing money out of Swiss banks.

On Nov. 3, he called and asked her to meet him “in a hurry” outside I. Magnin at South Coast Plaza.

As he drove her car to his apartment, she testified that “he told me that he was not a broker. He told me that he was a pro golfer and that he had used the money to buy various personal items and also to pay off a doctor or something like that. He was in trouble.”

Also, he was now fleeing a private detective hired by another woman to whom he owed money. So he cleared out of his apartment, and then disappeared.

Police said he would telephone the women at all hours, begging them not to go to the police.

On Dec. 10, two of them did. It was pure coincidence, said Detective Ramos. One reported she had lost $38,000, the other $1,500.

By now, a third woman had entered the picture: Lestringant. She had given $17,500--all of her savings--to Duffy for the stock market investment, and got the same treatment when she demanded it back.

Lestringant hired private eye Martin to find Duffy. She testified in court that Martin quickly learned Duffy was not a stockbroker, nor much of what he’d professed to be. He staked out Duffy’s apartment and favorite haunts for days, until he finally tracked him down. At this point Duffy gave the Rolex watch and Rolls-Royce pink slip to Martin, who gave them to one of the victims and to Lestringant, respectively.

A fourth victim surfaced, alleging Duffy claimed to be a stockbroker when they began dating last year. She testified in court that she gave Duffy $1,500 on Saturday, Nov. 18, to entertain clients in Bel Air because Duffy told her his bank was closed on weekends. He said he would repay her or he could invest the $1,500 and give her a 34% return.

The next day, she said she put on credit for Duffy two pairs of alligator shoes--the same style, in different colors--worth $1,537, which he said he would repay. That night, this woman testified, Duffy told her “he had invested some money for the Mafia and that they wanted the money back and that he was taking everything that he had to repay them and that his life was on the line, and that he had given them my $1,500.”

Duffy asked her for an additional $9,000 “to save his life to pay off the Mafia.” She did not give it to him.

Eventually, all four women who are testifying against him in court learned of each other via calls he made on their phones. They worked together, along with Martin, to get Duffy arrested.

But somewhere along the way, Lestringant said Duffy appealed to her “maternal” nature. The couple, under the mistaken belief that a spouse cannot be held to testify against her mate, drove to Las Vegas and married on the eve of Duffy’s preliminary hearing.

The judge ruled Lestringant had to testify, and reluctantly, she did.

Duffy was held to answer to four counts of grand theft. Lestringant paid the $4,000 down payment on his $40,000 bail, and secured the balance with her home.

“He’s absolutely not my dream husband,” Lestringant said. “I care very much for him and decided to help him. I wish someone else had done this before I came along.”

Are these women angry? You bet. So why do all but one want this guy out of prison?

“If he goes to jail, I don’t get my money back,” nor do the other victims, one said. “Mac doesn’t have a conscience now, but he’s not going to get one in jail. Maybe he will get one if he learns the price of what he’s done by having to work for the first time in his life. Now that would be justice.”

Jerry L. Steering, Duffy’s Newport Beach attorney, understandably agrees.

“All we hear about is the victims’ rights. Well, the victims don’t want to go through with all this, the testifying, so who is pushing all this?”

The answer: the Orange County district attorney’s office. Prosecutor Cafferty said the problem with dropping the charges is this: If you let a guy go who has allegedly committed a crime simply because he has paid back his victims, then you eliminate the punishment. And the deterrent.

Most of Duffy’s victims hope he is found guilty. But they want his sentence waived on the condition that he work to repay them. And if he doesn’t, only then would they want him to go to prison.

Because the criminal case against Duffy moved from Municipal to Superior Court, a new prosecutor has yet to be assigned to the case. And issues of sentencing would not be decided until after a conviction, prosecutors said.

So people like Lestringant just wait, and hope.

“If they send him to the slammer,” one woman said, “we continue to be victimized.”