Judge Rejects Deal, Gives Promoter 8-Year Sentence

A judge threw out a more lenient plea bargain Wednesday and sentenced Paul Hammack, a promoter accused of bilking celebrities and businessmen at a Pasadena baseball memorabilia show last September, to eight years in prison on an unrelated fraud charge from Texas.

U.S. District Court Judge William D. Keller in Los Angeles rejected an agreement that would have allowed Hammack to serve 366 days in jail and pay back $67,500 to David Lee of Laredo, Tex., a double amputee that Hammack was accused of defrauding.

The agreement was arranged by the U.S. attorney’s office in Laredo and Hammack’s attorney, Stephen R. Kahn of Century City. The case was transferred to Los Angeles for sentencing. Hammack, a Glendale resident, has been in federal custody in Los Angeles since his arrest on a Texas fugitive warrant in September.

But Keller, calling the crime “remarkably despicable” and “egregious,” seemed irritated by the agreement.

“That is not binding on me,” he said. “It has zero impact on me what some faceless gnome in Laredo thinks.”

Late last week, the Los Angeles district attorney filed 20 felony charges of grand theft, fraud and writing bad checks against Hammack in connection with the Pasadena memorabilia show. Hammack is accused of swindling more than $250,000 from 400 victims, including Mickey Mantle, Don Drysdale and Ron Cey, at that event. Arraignment has not been scheduled.

Hammack--who had used the alias Ernest Dent in Los Angeles-- was arrested on the Laredo charge while Pasadena police were investigating him in the aftermath of the Sept. 7-9 show.

The Texas charge involved a business deal that Hammack proposed to Lee, who had lost both arms in a trucking accident and was awarded a settlement by his employer. But Hammack disappeared with $67,500 of Lee’s money--more than two-thirds of the settlement--in 1984.

“This double amputee relates that losing $67,500 caused him financial devastation,” Keller said, referring to a probation report. “He lost his two-story home, he resides in a small trailer, lost his car . . . and he is married with four children.”

“I’m remorseful for what I did,” Hammack told the judge before sentencing. “I won’t run anymore.”

But Keller said: “He says he’s sorry now but he had six years to go back and find this man.” After sentencing, Hammack looked stunned and shaken as U.S. marshals led him away.

David Lee, in Laredo, said he has prosthetic arms and lives on Social Security benefits and earnings from odd jobs. “He talked so good, he could talk you out of anything,” Lee said of Hammack.

The earlier agreement “made me upset,” Lee said.