‘Former’ Con Artist Accused of Bilking 84-Year-Old Man

A Los Angeles man once featured on national television as a reformed con artist dedicated to fighting consumer fraud was arrested Monday, this time on suspicion of bilking an 84-year-old man out of half a million dollars.

Steven Robert Comisar, 41, was ordered held without bail by a federal magistrate, who called him an economic danger to the community. “I think it would be negligent on my part to put this defendant back out on the street and expose some other 84-year-old,” said magistrate Judge Patrick J. Walsh.

Assuming the government’s allegations are true, the judge said, “this man has the ability to call someone he’s never met before and talk him out of his life’s savings. What do I say to the next victim?”

Comisar was convicted in Los Angeles federal court in 1983, 1990, 1994 and 1999 for various telemarketing frauds.

He served three years in prison for his most recent scam, and was on probation in January when he allegedly telephoned Arthur Baldwin, an elderly retiree in Minneapolis, offering him a chance to invest in a television show in the planning stage. An FBI affidavit said Comisar had identified himself as “Gene Reiner,” executive producer of the “International Television Network” in Los Angeles.

Over the course of several months, Comisar persuaded Baldwin to pour more and more money into the making of the bogus show, “Trends of the 21st Century,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Tom Warren, who prosecuted Comisar in 1999.

Warren said Comisar was soliciting money from Baldwin as recently as two weeks ago. By that time, however, the FBI had entered the case and tape-recorded his telephone conversations with Baldwin.

Comisar deposited most of the money he got from Baldwin into a bank account he shares with his mother, Warren told the judge. Some of the money was used to buy a 2003 Corvette, while other funds went for child support to his estranged third wife and to pay court-ordered restitution to his previous victim, a retired engineer who was bilked out of $100,000, prosecutors said.

At the time of his 1999 arrest, Comisar was making the rounds on national TV shows promoting his book, “America’s Guide to Fraud Prevention.” He dedicated the work to a federal judge who had freed him on probation after an earlier conviction instead of sentencing him to 46 months in prison.