Promoter of Memorabilia Show Arrested on Texas Fraud Warrant

The sports memorabilia promoter who has been accused of bilking celebrities and businessmen of more than $100,000 at a recent Pasadena show was arrested Friday night on an unrelated fugitive warrant for fraud.

A man Pasadena police identified as Paul Hammack who, under the name of Ernest E. Dent, staged the controversial “Baseball Legends” card and collectibles show, was arrested at his rented Glendale townhouse on a 5-year-old Texas charge of defrauding a Laredo man of about $70,000.

The victim “lost both of his arms in a trucking accident and was awarded a large settlement from his employer,” Pasadena Police Lt. Van Anthony said. Dent offered a business proposition to the man, David Lee, then “disappeared with $70,000 of Mr. Lee’s money,” Anthony said.

Dent was arrested about eight hours after he had met with police in his lawyer’s Century City office and discussed the recent sports show in which stars such as Mickey Mantle and Don Drysdale said they were paid with checks that bounced. Until the Friday meeting was arranged, police had not been able to find Dent since the Sept. 7-9 event.

Police have been investigating him for grand theft and writing bad checks from the show, but Anthony said they did not yet have sufficient evidence to arrest him. “That investigation has fizzled,” he said. “We need to do a lot more work” on the case.

Accordingly, they did not arrest him at Friday morning’s meeting, but kept him under surveillance until the 7 p.m. arrest. Anthony said officers wanted to see if Dent would lead them to any of hundreds of valuable items still missing from the show.

Instead, he just went home, Anthony said, and officers decided to arrest him there.

Dent, a 300-pound man with a beard, graying dark hair and glasses, was sitting on a sofa and greeted officers with aplomb. “Are you here for me?” he said. “I thought you would be coming.”

As he was led outside in handcuffs, a reporter asked if his name was really Hammack. “I am that I am,” he said. “Let me tell you what I really think. I don’t have to chase ghosts any more, you understand? I don’t have to hide any more. I am who I am.”

Had he defrauded anyone from the show? “Absolutely not. Under no circumstances,” he said.

Had he defrauded anyone in Laredo? “I didn’t do anything in Laredo, Texas,” he said.

Dent will be held without bail pending extradition to Texas, Anthony said.

Dent’s attorney, Stephen R. Kahn, said Friday evening that he did not know Pasadena police were planning to make an arrest. “I have no idea whether the charges have any validity. I can’t comment until I talk to my client,” he said.

Earlier, Kahn said Dent “intends to abide by all his responsibilities and commitments” regarding the Pasadena show.

A number of businessmen have said they still want payment for unpaid travel, printing and other services. Several collectors claim they are missing valuable memorabilia.

Other celebrities who said they received checks that bounced, Anthony said, were baseball stars Ernie Banks, Steve Garvey, Lou Brock, Eddie Mathews, Ron Cey, Bill Russell, Brooks Robinson and Davey Lopes, former Laker Kurt Rambis and boxing champion Joe Frazier.

Anthony said Dent has used as many as 14 aliases. “He’s like an onion,” he said. “Every time you take a layer off, you get another. You can’t get to the core.”

Before staging the baseball show, Anthony said, Dent was linked to the simultaneous operation of at least 12 escort services in the Los Angeles area, with names such as Leather and Lace, Night Heat and Athletes in Action.

Two years ago, he was involved in a failed pay-telephone business venture in West Virginia, where, state officials said, Dent was among company officials responsible for misusing several thousand dollars in government job-training funds.

In the 1984 Texas incident, Anthony said Dent approached Lee about “business ventures” that purportedly involved some Las Vegas property with “investment potential.” After Lee gave him money, authorities said, the man, known as Hammack, disappeared.

The man known as Dent also disappeared within two days after the Pasadena show, about the time businessmen and sports stars were accusing him of defrauding them.

“His check bounced like (a) Wilt Chamberlain basketball,” Frazier said this week by telephone from Philadelphia.

Dealers and collectors said Dent was unknown to them before last spring, when he started turning up at various shows and stores, talking about his show. “He made everybody think he had a lot of money and would do something in Southern California that no one had ever done before,” said Stu Kops, co-owner of Bases Loaded, a baseball card shop in Sherman Oaks.

The show was one of many in the increasingly popular and lucrative sports memorabilia field and was believed to be the largest ever staged in Southern California.

But as the event neared, many involved noticed Dent’s inexperience at such shows and disorganization. The night before the show opened, Kops came across Dent frantically trying to make 40,000 tickets for autograph signings--by hand.

Frazier said he waited three hours at Los Angeles International Airport for a limousine Dent had promised but which never came, and Mantle waited two-and-a-half hours in Newport Beach for a limousine to Pasadena.

Linda Chesson, a Norco collector hired to work at the autograph tables, said she arrived the first morning to find “total bedlam . . . there were tables but no pens to sign anything.”

Still unresolved are the whereabouts of items mailed by about 350 private citizens to be autographed by stars and returned. Kahn said one of Dent’s associates was last seen in possession of them. But the associate said that, while he has some, Dent has the rest.