Thief of Women’s Hearts, Money Convicted : Courts: James Borzynski is found guilty of swindling 3 local women out of $87,000. Promises of love became his access to cash from as many as 10 victims.

The case was spicier than “Peyton Place,” more provocative than “Oprah,” said jurors who deliberated just two hours Tuesday before convicting a Laguna Niguel used-car dealer of romancing three women and then swindling them out of $87,000.

“I’m waiting for the TV movie,” said juror Cindy Kindinger of Foothill Ranch. “I want to see how he could be so intense that he could get money from these women in a week.”

James Borzynski, 45, was convicted of three counts of grand theft and a felony enhancement charge of “excessive taking.”

Members of an Orange County Superior Court jury said they had little difficulty finding Borzynski guilty because they believed the five women who testified against him.

The women described how Borzynski posed as a Newport Beach attorney in trouble with the IRS and promised them love and marriage to wheedle them out of their money.

Only three of the women, all from Orange County, pressed charges. The other women, however, came from Northern California to testify as witnesses during the weeklong trial.

“The behavior was continuing to the very end, to the very day he was arrested,” said jury foreman Roger Camp, referring to a dinner date Borzynski missed the night of Nov. 4, 1993, because police took him into custody.

“It showed that he just wasn’t going to stop,” said Camp, of Huntington Beach. “Not unless we stopped him.”

Their one regret, jurors said, was not being able to see Borzynski in action.

“What was so hypnotic about his behavior?” Camp asked. “That was something we would have liked to have seen, but never will. That remains the one mystery.”

Borzynski bowed his head slightly as the verdict was read. A bailiff then led him out of the courtroom to jail, where he will be held without bail until sentencing on Dec. 9.

He faces a maximum of five years and four months in state prison.

Outside the courtroom, Borzynski’s defense attorney said his client was “extremely disappointed.”

“His concerns were that the victims were being held in a sympathetic light and that would make it difficult for him to prevail,” said attorney Dennis P. O’Connell.

O’Connell contended that Borzynski did nothing wrong because he was always honest about being in financial difficulties.

“Have they been defrauded, have they been misled when they know he has nothing?” O’Connell asked. “They haven’t.”

The attorney said he will appeal the verdict and will ask that Borzynski be placed on probation so that he can have an opportunity to pay the women back. It’s a chance, O’Connell said, that Borzynski has always wanted. Since being released on bail several months ago, Borzynski has been working as a used-car salesman in Fremont, he said.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph D’Agostino said Borzynski deserves prison.

“Based on his prior record, the amount of loss here and the viciousness of his behavior, we’re going to ask for a lengthy prison sentence,” D’Agostino said.

Borzynski was arrested in Tiburon, Calif., after 10 California women alleged he swindled them out of as much as $150,000. Many of the women were too embarrassed about being duped to press charges, said Orange County Sheriff Investigator Cliff Deller.

Investigators said Borzynski answered personal ads from women seeking companionship and then posed as a widowed Newport Beach attorney who needed money to pay back taxes for his deceased wife’s estate. Witnesses said he promised to pay all of them back as soon as the estate was settled, but instead disappeared with their money.

In some cases, he promised women with children that they could be a family, the women testified. Borzynski used at least 12 aliases in his dealings with the women, prosecutors say.

One widowed woman, 47-year-old Joan Norton, gave him $51,000 from her husband’s insurance money. Another woman, who asked to be identified only as “Valerie,” borrowed $13,000 from an ex-boyfriend and gave him another $18,000 from the sale of her Laguna Niguel condominium.

Valerie testified that she was so in love with Borzynski that she once cried and begged on her knees for his forgiveness in a restaurant when he became angry after learning she was suspicious of him.

Another of Borzynski’s victims said Tuesday that she will be glad to see him go to prison.

“I’m very happy he’ll be off the streets and won’t be able to continue his profession of con artist for quite a while,” said Carol Gamper of Marin County. “I consider it his profession because he was pretty good at it, though not good enough because he got caught--didn’t he?”