Behind Eminent Facade of ‘the General’

To many, the dapper 72-year-old was simply “the General,” and not merely because of the tales he told of life in the British military. It was right there on his parking space beneath the Sunset Boulevard office tower: “General Debden-Moss.”

He’d arrive in his Lincoln from his secluded Beverly Hills home and head to his 10th-floor office suite, down the hall from Pat Boone Enterprises, to conduct a trade that seemed totally out of place among all the entertainment firms. Hard commodities.

Big deals, though: Sugar from Brazil, straight from the refineries. Fertilizer to India, ordered by the government itself. Cigarettes to Russia, 91 million cigarettes.

“Even in the elevator, he was always with his phone, always conducting business,” an office neighbor said.

These days, however, Gen. Marc Debden-Moss, a.k.a. Gen. Marc Debenham, a.k.a. Col. Jonathan Hancock, has a new title: defendant. He stood in federal court this week not in his starched white collar and French cuff links, but in prison blue.

Culminating an investigation that stretched from Scotland Yard to the U.S. Customs Service, a 20-count indictment accuses Moss of defrauding more then 100 victims around the world by getting “advanced fees” for commodities, often $25,000 a pop.

Federal authorities say there is “no evidence . . . Moss has ever . . . supplied a commodity.”

To be sure, the $3 million in losses alleged so far hardly puts Moss atop of the list of suspected con artists in Southern California, the capital of white collar crime. But most of the schemes you see take more modern forms--boiler rooms selling office supplies, theft by computer or self-styled “producers” rounding up investors for films they’ll never make.

In this company, “the General” emerges from federal records as a figure from another era, straight out of central casting--the aristocratic poseur.

It was in a deep British accent that he pleaded not guilty Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia Phillips, occasionally patting down the white hair he grows long enough to sweep over his scalp in an attempt--only partly successful--to cover his bald spot.

“Mr. Moss vigorously contests this,” his attorney, Errol H. Stambler, said outside court. “We can’t understand why they decided to handle this as a criminal matter. He feels it’s some disgruntled buyers who lost deposits due to their own defaults [on] written contracts. He didn’t defraud anyone.”

And Moss’ use of “General”? Or his alleged claim to be a “sir” named by Buckingham Palace to the Order of the British Empire?

“He was in the British Army,” Stambler said. “I assume that’s what they called him” General--”as a nickname.”

“Embellishments or puffery,” the lawyer added, “are not illegal.”

The case is spelled out in a 43-page affidavit filed by Customs Service Special Agent Henry C. Griffin Jr. to get search warrants for Moss’ office and Coldwater Canyon Drive home. It not only outlines findings of the Customs Service--brought in for its expertise in international currency transfers--but of Scotland Yard, which tracked Moss for several years.

Even so, Moss’ whereabouts before 1989 remain “a mystery,” Griffin said.

Scotland Yard did find he had a London office from 1989 to 1992, with employees saying he served as an intermediary between buyers and sellers of commodities and “referred to himself as a ‘general’ and a ‘sir,” though at times demoting himself to “Col. Hancock.” British authorities found no evidence supporting the titles.

Moss did business as the United States Steel Group. One employee said he claimed, “We’re part of U.S. Steel.” Though he took advance payments, another employee told Scotland Yard, “None of the deals ever materialized.”

But about the time Scotland Yard got on his trail, he fled, said Griffin, the customs agent.

Investigators believe he came to the United States in April 1992 on a six-month business visa, and soon was heavy into the fast-moving commodities world, where products crisscross the globe amid a slew of paperwork: letters of credit, proof of product and performance guarantees. He often hooked up with legitimate brokers seeking goods for customers they’d lined up.

Ivan Strlekar needed cigarettes. Marlboros.

Strlekar was an Austrian businessman. The cigarettes needed to be in Moscow.

In the September 1992 deal, the first detailed in Griffin’s affidavit, Strlekar placed an order with Moss for 10 container loads and paid more than booking fees. He transferred $1.9 million to Moss’ firm. So when the Marlboros never arrived, there was a crisis: “The buyer . . . in Moscow [took] Strlekar’s Moscow representative hostage.”

Enraged, the Austrian flew here to confront Moss, the document says. Moss allegedly gave “conflicting accounts” of the cigarette shipment, then tried to talk Strlekar into a new deal--to buy sugar.

The ending of the episode is remarkable evidence of Moss’ persuasive powers. First, Strlekar got attorneys in Los Angeles to freeze more than $1 million in Moss’ accounts. But Moss pleaded with him to free the funds on grounds that “he needed that kind of money to close another deal,” and thus repay the full amount, recalled Brentwood lawyer Michael Doland.

Against the advice of his amazed lawyers, Strlekar ordered them “to release that money,” Doland said--and the Austrian businessman never got a penny.

“This was like a bar exam question, ‘Spot all the fraud in this case,’ ” recalled Howard Gould, another attorney for Strlekar. “But these people living overseas, they see something called U.S. Steel . . . and he had all the trappings.”

Other names did just as well for Moss, according to the affidavit:

* In 1993, operating as Gulf Steel Holdings Corp., he got $28,000 from a Singapore businessman to seal a deal for 100,000 metric tons of cement, to be delivered to Pakistan’s State Cement Corp. Moss even spelled out the ship supposedly carrying the load--from Russia--but Pakistani inspectors found no such vessels in port.

* In 1995--as Charterhouse Gulf Holding Corp.--he got $20,000 through a commodities broker in Culver City for a phantom shipment of Brazilian sugar after Moss claimed he “met a finance minister in Brazil during the time that he was a general.”

* In December 1995, he got $50,000 from a New York commodities broker trying to supply $36 million of urea fertilizer for India. Moss used “a sham document from a nonexisting bank” on the Republic of Nauru in the Pacific, the affidavit says, and “fooled . . . the government of India.”

When customers questioned him, Moss would accuse them of not meeting their obligations.

“You have a contract they sign open-eyed as well as a follow-up letter that the deposit will be defaulted” if they don’t comply, said Stambler, Moss’ attorney. “These are sophisticated buyers. . . . If this was fraud, why would he put it all in writing?”

Investigators say the tangled nature of the deals is one reason Moss was able to keep going so long. And though some customers complained to authorities, no one put together the big pattern.

Meanwhile, Moss’ lifestyle included cars for himself (the Lincoln), his ex-wife (a Jaguar) and office assistant (a Mercedes).

The real estate agent who found his most recent house, Doris King--Beverly Hills’ “singing Realtor”--said Moss showed her photos of red-brick estates in England and impressed her, as well, by his “good-looking Italian suits, nicely cut” and “wonderful family life,” with four grown children in England and his elegant ex-wife, said to have been a ballerina in Monaco.

“The whole thing about him is class,” King said.

The real estate agent showed Moss “quite a few” multimillion-dollar homes before he rented a place--across from Charlton Heston’s--for $5,700 a month. Moss liked the seclusion, telling the home’s owners he did sensitive “security council” work. Investigators say he often flashed an I.D. card and gave one alleged victim reference letters from the Washington-based American Security Council describing “the General’s involvement with the acquisition of the osmium isotope.”

The American Security Council is real--a conservative think tank that rates Congress members’ voting records. Executive Director Gregg Hilton said anyone who gives a donation, usually $25, gets a membership card. And he laughed at the letters found by investigators, calling them a “total fraud.”

Moss rented his latest offices in November at 9200 Sunset Blvd., right where the boulevard hits Beverly Hills’ grand residential strip.

Even among an entertainment crowd used to eccentrics, “the General” drew raised eyebrows around the tower. Angry delegations would show up from places like Saudi Arabia and say he owed them money, a garage manager said.

The deal that led to his arrest began this past May, records show, when London-based Haluk Mehmet Bilek paid $25,000 in advance of getting a “floating cargo” of sugar for a Turkish company.

When no product was forthcoming, Bilek turned to Scotland Yard, which pressured American authorities for help. The FBI and Customs Service were enlisted and an undercover agent accompanied Bilek as he demanded--in secretly taped meetings--that Moss give proof he could deliver the product. An indignant Moss dared Bilek “to report this incident to police if he was looking for trouble,” the affidavit says.

Federal agents were waiting the morning of July 25 with an arrest warrant alleging wire fraud and money laundering. As Moss walked from his reserved parking spot, an agent called out, “General! General!” and offered a handshake--a ploy to slap on handcuffs.

Investigators said Moss retorted, “that’s not me,” but they got him before he reached the elevators.

At a bail hearing the next day, he was ordered held as a flight risk.

“We strongly believe he poses a danger [if he gets to] a room with a phone and fax machine,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Julie Werner-Simon. “This guy’s really good.”

Now, with trial scheduled Oct. 1, officials are checking basic details of Moss’ story--starting with the claim that he’s a born Englishman.

“We can’t confirm that,” Griffin said. “It looks like he was actually born in Romania.”