Whatever happened to Earl Belle?
'Twas 50 years ago this Fourth of July that "The Pittsburgh Whiz Kid'' took off for Rio de Janeiro, leaving bankers in the little Indiana County town of Saltsburg with nothing but the right to say they'd been ripped off by "the youngest securities fugitive in history.''
That designation is from "The Watchdogs of Wall Street'' by Hillel Black, a 1962 mini-history of stock manipulators. Mr. Belle, only 26 when he lit out with his new wife for Brazil, was one of that book's stars.
Our newspaper files are thick with clippings on what he did here in 1958, but after resurfacing in 1982 in another $1 million scam on some German investors in Arizona, Belle vanished -- at least from the media's eye. Computer searches turned up nothing new on this flim-flammer, though a lawyer for the bilked Germans was saying as late as 1993 that he was "one of the most notorious con men of all time.''
If for nothing other than the bluff he played with helicopters hereabouts, he should be remembered on the 50th anniversary of his scam.
Belle had modest origins. His father ran a butcher shop in McKeesport before he began selling off-brand shoes, and his mother was a teacher. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Earl Belle knew just enough to be dangerous.
He found some backers and got a controlling block of stock in the First National Bank of Saltsburg, and helped persuade townsfolk there to subscribe to a $112,000 public bond issue. That came to roughly $100 for each man, woman and child in town, according to Mr. Black. A drapery manufacturer, displaced by the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority's remake of the city, moved to Saltsburg with 150 jobs. Then came a meat processor and a tool manufacturer. The town felt so flush it built a new school and fire house.
The baby-faced Belle, who "swaggered while others walked,'' wanted more. His little group bought a controlling interest in Cornucopia Gold Mines, a defunct mining operation in Washington state that was still listed on the American Stock Exchange, and began shuffling legal paper in ways that still get hedge fund managers into handcuffs today.
Meantime, Pittsburgh newspapers loved the guy. He flew newsmen and civic and business leaders to New York, and entertained them with "a 24-piece string orchestra, the best whisky and some of the city's loveliest and most knowledgeable hostesses,'' a '60s euphemism for prostitutes if ever I read one.
Belle drove a Jaguar, a Mercedes and a white Cadillac, but as he strutted, his companies sank. So he flew in Long Island bankers, already on the hook to his team for $200,000, to show them around.
They flew two rented copters to Saltsburg, where Belle and his partner "had hired a battalion of bulldozers, pile drivers and earth-moving machinery.'' As soon as the workers heard the copters, they began moving the equipment back and forth as the con artists explained to the bankers all they'd be building.
On the flight back to Pittsburgh, they swept down over a municipal lot where the city stored its machinery. "Belle leaned out and waved to the workers below. The workers naturally returned the greeting ... The bankers were left with the impression that this equipment also belonged to [Belle's corporation]. And from the air, who would believe otherwise?"
Renting the equipment cost Belle about 10 grand, and the bankers loaned him another $225,000. Belle began moving that money around. In late June 1958, Belle took $40,000 out of a Saltsburg bank and fled for South America over the July Fourth weekend.
On Aug. 2, 1961, his partners, Murray and Burton Talenfeld, pleaded guilty to 13 charges and no defense to 25 others. Each got a year in prison and a $20,000 fine, with federal Judge Rabe F. Marsh saying, "They may have been dupes but they were greedy dupes.''
Belle, who had stolen at least a million, became celebrity enough for NBC's David Brinkley to fly down to Rio to interview him in 1962. By then Belle had a third wife -- a Brazilian socialite -- and a slew of servants, though he pleaded poverty and innocence.
He returned in 1963, having worn out his welcome in Brazil, and served 22 months of a 30-month sentence for embezzlement. By 1966, he was 34 and working for his father as a shoe salesman. But that Al Bundy lifestyle evidently didn't suit him, and he went back to scamming. Then disappeared. Again.
Whatever happened to Earl Belle? Pick up any newspaper. You'll find a nation reeling from a credit binge and lax lending standards, the stock market stripped of more than $2 trillion in imaginary wealth, and developers pretending they have millions more than they actually do. America is always ready for the next con. Some are even legal.
First Published: July 3, 2008, 10:45 a.m.
