View of Consummate Con Man: ‘He Grows on You--Like a Wart’ : Crime: The latest of his nine wives and her family are stunned to learn of his past arrests for forgery, fraud, theft, larceny and bigamy.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The new man in town left little to chance.

He didn’t just wine and dine Lindy Lee Gold, he also endeared himself to her entire family. When Gold’s son called from the Virgin Islands to say he had been robbed and was flat broke, he offered to send money. When Gold’s mother became ill, he offered to have specialists flown in.

A month after their first meeting, in a quiet civil ceremony, the couple became Mr. and Mrs. Harold Lansky.

And soon after, Lansky was hitting Gold up for thousands of dollars in loans.

It wasn’t until nine months later that Gold learned she was the latest victim of Harold Jay Kaplan, a 53-year-old career con man with a record of arrests in California, New York, Nevada and Florida for forgery, fraud, theft, larceny and bigamy.

Kaplan, whose local address now is the New Haven Correctional Center, had been married at least eight times before.

Some of his former victims, including ex-wives, were too embarrassed to press charges, according to police, who have compiled a thick file on Kaplan.

But not Gold. In May, she sent a police officer in her place to meet him at a local restaurant. She also has encouraged publicity about the case to get other victims to identify themselves.

“Not to come forward would be like failure to warn somebody about an avoidable but incurable disease,” she said.

Kaplan might not have been a handsome man, but he was a master schmoozer.

He showed up in New Haven a year ago, telling everyone he was a wealthy California businessman and the nephew of reputed mobster Meyer Lansky. It didn’t hurt that he bore a striking resemblance to Jake Lansky, Meyer’s brother.

“He knows exactly what buttons to push. He grows on you--like a wart,” said New Haven police Detective T. W. O’Donnell.

“There is no one I encountered who didn’t believe him,” said Gold, the vice president of marketing for the Milford Travel Agency. “There was nothing about his life to be too insignificant to have an elaborate story that went with it.”

Prosecutors are treating Kaplan as a career criminal, a status usually reserved for violent offenders and a signal to the courts that the state believes he should be dealt with harshly.

He is being held on $150,000 bond on felony charges of second-degree forgery and first-degree larceny, accused of conning Gold and her family out of $75,000 and lying on his marriage certificate. No trial date has been set.

Despite a record of arrests dating to 1965, most in California, he has spent little time in prison.

“He also cons the courts,” O’Donnell said. “He tells the courts, ‘Lock me up, and these people won’t get restitution.’ ”

After a 1986 arrest for grand theft in Beverly Hills, Calif., Kaplan got probation instead of jail time, despite a prophetic warning by a probation officer.

“The defendant is a consummate con man,” the officer wrote in a report obtained by the New Haven Register. “He has conned people all of his life, and to expect him to discontinue this behavior is unrealistic.

“This probation officer feels that it is only a matter of time before the defendant cheats another unsuspecting victim out of money. In fact, during the probation interview, the probation officer kept his own hand firmly on his wallet.”

Kaplan, who declined to be interviewed, was paroled in July, 1990, after serving 10 months of a two-year sentence for theft in Chino, Calif. A tennis pro known for preying on the country club set, he was released on the unusual condition he not play tennis or be within 1,000 feet of any tennis court or country club.

But Kaplan, still under the supervision of the California Corrections Department, was working at a tennis club in Northridge, Calif., when he suddenly packed his bags and came to New Haven on Aug. 7, 1991, according to the Register.

Gold, 48, was introduced to Kaplan a week later at an expensive New Haven restaurant where he had become a regular. She agreed to have lunch with him the next day.

“You have to understand that, if there was anything this man exhibited publicly or privately, it was total adoration,” said Gold, who had been married three times before.

A week after they became Mr. and Mrs. Lansky, Kaplan asked his new wife for a loan. He said he needed $25,000 in quick cash to help friends open a restaurant in New York.

Gold figured there was nothing to worry about. Kaplan was fond of saying he had enough money to last 10 lifetimes; the way he spent it, there was no reason to doubt him.

After the two were married and moved into her condominium, Kaplan spent much of his time playing tennis and buying new equipment. In a few months, he accumulated 33 rackets.

He had told Gold he came to town on business. He said he owned a house in Tarzana, Calif., was a partner in van transportation companies, owned a Los Angeles shopping center and had a share of the National Football League’s Denver Broncos.

None of it, she learned later, was true.

When Gold pressed for details, Kaplan promised to set up a meeting with his lawyers and accountants. But when the time came, he said it had to be postponed because of problems he was having with the IRS.

In December, Kaplan gave Gold a surprise gift: a new black Mercedes. The next day, he said he needed another cash loan, this time $50,000, to help the New York restaurant venture. She figured that if he could afford the Mercedes, he was good for the money.

But she became suspicious in March when he only reluctantly gave her his Social Security number, which she wanted for her taxes. Still, she said, she still had no reason to suspect that he was a fraud.

The con began to unravel in late April, when Kaplan went to New York for a business meeting and disappeared for two days. While he was gone, she learned he had borrowed the money for the Mercedes from her brother-in-law and was supposed to have paid it back the day he disappeared. She later paid back her brother-in-law and assumed the loss herself.

Gold let Kaplan back in the house, but only, she said, because she wanted to know how big a phony he was.

In early May, she got her answer from friends in law enforcement: They told her about a con man named Harold Kaplan. She knew that had to be her Hal.

Kaplan disappeared again May 6, taking all his belongings except shirts monogrammed HJL.

Gold thought he was gone for good. But for reasons still unknown, he came back a second time, only to be thrown in jail.

“Do I find it impossible to believe that the whole thing was a con?” she said. “At an intellectual level, no. At an emotional level, yes.”