Man bilks mother out of $240,000

By Sue Yanagisawa
Local News - Monday, June 20, 2005 @ 07:00

A second-generation Kingston cab owner with a gambling addiction so fierce he ripped off his widowed mother for $240,700 and schemed to get more during the year he awaited sentence, has been sent to prison for two years.

It was a somewhat ironic outcome, since Robert Gerald Ball wheedled the first $214,800 out of his mom by claiming he needed the cash to buy a position with the National Parole Board.

When Ball originally entered his plea to the fraud in June 2004 in front of Superior Court Justice Helen MacLeod, court was told that he’d conned his mother out of the cash between March 1 and June 6, 2003. In that brief time, Crown attorney Ross Drummond advised the judge that Marie Ball had cashed in her RRSPs, mortgaged her home and approached friends and acquaintances for loans on her son’s behalf.

MacLeod ordered a pre-sentence report and initially scheduled Ball’s sentencing for last September.

A series of adjournments were subsequently requested and granted, however, until March 9 this year, when Ball’s lawyer, Clyde Smith, gave notice he could no longer represent his client.

Smith had learned that a letter was forged under his firm’s letterhead, purporting to be from him and addressed to his client’s mother. It stated that his client had cashed an insurance policy to make restitution “on a matter currently before the courts” and gave assurance that the money owed would be returned within 14 days. The signature was illegible, but it gave the appearance of being from Smith and it was a complete fraud.

A police investigation discovered that after Ball’s mother received the letter, however, she’d approached an acquaintance for yet another loan for her son. The letter was proffered as proof the loan would be short term. She later told police she’d found the letter in her mailbox at Modern Taxi, where she also owns taxi cabs, and thought it was genuine.

In withdrawing from the case, Smith supplied his client with the names of several other lawyers he thought would be willing to take over and MacLeod ordered Ball to return to her court with one of them on March 18. She was contemplating jailing Ball until his sentencing hearing.

By the time that date arrived, though, the point was largely moot. Ball was already in custody for violating conditions of his bail that required him to live with his surety and abstain from communicating, directly or indirectly, with his mother.

Three days earlier, while investigating the forged letter, Kingston Police Det. Chris Watkins arrested him after learning that Ball changed addresses about four months earlier without seeking the court’s permission. He was also convinced that Ball was continuing to hit his mother up for money in contravention of the non-communication order.

A month later, Ball was brought back before Justice MacLeod to determine whether he should stay in custody. She decided he should, after hearing more about the extent of his gambling problem.

By then, assistant Crown attorney Jeff Richardson had taken over the case and he told the judge that Ball voluntarily signed a document in September 2003 requesting that he be banned from the casino in Gananoque. In October 2004, however, he sneaked back in and was found on site and charged with trespassing.

MacLeod also heard about multiple mortgages Ball’s mother took out on her home and numerous loans she secured and turned over to her eldest child, which he in turn used to feed his gambling addiction.

“It’s absolutely mind-boggling,” the judge said at the time.

Ball’s new lawyer, Michael Woogh, appeared with him at the hearing but elected not to call any evidence. He also had to tell MacLeod that four taxi drivers who had come to court prepared to act as bail sure-ties for his client had expressed concerns to him about their ability to control Ball after what they’d heard in court.

MacLeod ordered Ball’s detention to continue, fearing he’d commit more frauds to feed his gambling habit if he was set free.

Ever the gambler, as Ball was being taken through the parking lot behind Frontenac County Court House after the hearing, he suddenly bolted from his police escort.

Consequently, when his sentencing date finally arrived on Friday he faced eight more charges, in addition to the original fraud against his mother. Richardson agreed to withdraw four of those charges and Ball entered guilty pleas to the other four: an assault on his mom with a rake in June 2003; violating his original release undertaking by communicating with his mother in July 2003; forging the letter on his lawyer’s letterhead in February; and escaping custody in April.

Richardson told MacLeod that just before Ball made his run for it in the parking lot outside her courtroom around 4:30 p.m., he’d been telling the officers that it was much too nice a day to be in custody.

They heard him say, “Sorry guys, I’m not going back.” Then he veered left and started running a diagonal toward the west end of the building and Barrie Street. Det. Watkins ran after him and yelled for him to stop, but Ball shouted back, “I’m not stopping.”

Court staff were watching through the courtroom windows as Ball reached the lawns in front of Red Cross headquarters, tripped and went down, to be recaptured by the two officers.

Richardson also told the judge about the ugly scene on June 28, 2003, at Marie Ball’s former home in South Frontenac Township. Her eldest son showed up that day demanding the keys to her vehicles. When she refused, he persisted, according to Richardson, and swore at her when she wouldn’t budge.

When that didn’t work, he told her, Ball took a rake from his mother’s garage, wielded it like a baseball bat and swung it toward her. The strike missed her, but hit a garbage pail on the ground next to her. Her son then told her: “Give me the [deleted] keys to the car or I will break the [deleted] window.”

Ball’s brother, Roger, a year his junior, urged their mother to call the police. Richardson said Robert Ball told them: “Call the cops and I’ll [deleted] kill you.”

In sentencing Ball, MacLeod characterized his gambling addiction as a “horrendous tragedy.”

She told him, “I can’t imagine anything more sinister to do to a family member than what you have done.”

In addition to sending him to federal prison, she ordered that Ball be subject to probation supervision for three years after he gets out of prison and she imposed 11 conditions on his remaining free.

Among those conditions, he’s

forbidden from communicating with his mother, brother or sister-in-law, except with their written, revocable consent. He was also issued a free-standing restitution order, requiring him to repay his mother $240,700.

Source

www.OttawaMensCentre.com

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