Real Estate Agents Get Warning About Suspicious Man Claims Wealth, Apparently Prefers Blondes

The Spokane Association of Realtors is warning local real estate agents about a possible con artist and convicted burglar who may be claiming to be a wealthy attorney with enough cash to buy a $300,000 home.

The man, who says he’s from Seattle, has been calling blond female real estate agents this week and asking them to show him upper-end homes, mainly in rural areas. In several cases, he’s canceled daytime appointments to reschedule for the evening, and told at least five agents his wife was sick and wouldn’t be able to come along.

He also told the women he wanted to buy a home quickly - within a week.

The man actually made a $240,000 offer on a rural Spokane Valley home Tuesday night. But when ReMax agent Lauri Costello-Maclay went to his motel Friday morning to have him sign the final paperwork, he took off running.

Literally.

“He’s a major con artist,” Costello-Maclay said Friday afternoon, after talking with Spokane police. “He’s told us all a bunch of different stories.”

With the man in hiding, police can’t be certain of his identity. And even if they were, Spokane Police spokesman Dick Cottam said, “I’m not sure he’s broken any law.”

So far, he appears to have lied and scared people, Cottam said.

He’s given agents at least two different names. His physical description, and the name he gave to Costello-Maclay, matches that of a man known to have 12 convictions, including burglary and assault, Cottam said.

The Spokane Association of Realtors has put out a bulletin, asking all agents contacted by the suspicious man to report what they know to the association president.

Agents are concerned that he might be targeting women, scoping out expensive homes or both.

The man also may have abandoned the woman he claimed was his wife - a woman he said was dying of Huntington’s disease. When he bolted from the downtown Ramada Limited motel Friday morning, he left the woman behind, said Costello-Maclay.

When Costello-Maclay and her husband, fellow real estate agent Scott Maclay, went to talk to the woman, they said they noticed four or five business cards of other local real estate agents in the room.

“All of the women were blond,” said Costello-Maclay, who recognized the names on the cards. And at least three of the five women who were contacted said they had been told similar stories.

The man started contacting agents Sunday and Monday, telling them he’d seen their listings in the free real estate books available at most supermarkets. He told agent Sabrina Jones that he was an attorney who had studied at the University of Washington. His wife was sick, he said, and he wanted to buy a home fast.

“He said he would bring a checkbook. He said he would have a bank statement. He was saying all the right things,” Jones said.

He told Costello-Maclay that his father had left him a $1.3 million yacht, and that he’d sold it recently, along with a $360,000 home in Seattle. When another agent - one familiar with moorage costs - asked him how much he’d paid to keep the boat at a certain marina, he gave a reasonable answer.

“He was very convincing,” said the woman, who didn’t want her name used.

Spokane police aren’t seeking the man, but local real estate agents are warning each other to be on the lookout for him. They describe him as a white man in his 30s, about 6 feet tall and 175 pounds. He has a thin build, brownish-red hair and what appears to be a lazy eye.

Because of him, agents who had hoped to make a quick holiday sale say they now face a very unpleasant task: warning their clients that a former burglar may have toured their home.