Sunday, June 16, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific

Ex-Seattleite gets 12 years for fraud

By Christine Clarridge
Seattle Times staff reporter

A self-professed con man who used the name of a dead classmate to steal millions from local investors and banks has been sentenced to 12-1/2 years in a federal prison.

James R. Rowe, 41, formerly of Seattle, pleaded guilty late last year to federal charges stemming from a multimillion-dollar bank- and investment-fraud scheme. Rowe, who had posed as a Navy Seal, pro-football player and deputy federal marshal, was charged in two federal cases, one involving a fraud scheme that caused losses of nearly $10 million and the other the illegal purchase and possession of firearms and the impersonation of a U.S. marshal.

Rowe fled the Seattle area in March 2000, severing contact with the investors, banks and a wife, prosecutors said. He was arrested in October that year, in San Diego, at his wedding rehearsal.

At Friday's sentencing, United States District Judge Marsha J. Pechman also ordered Rowe to pay restitution of $8.7 million.

Rowe, who has used various names during his many cons, including the name of a dead classmate at Ballard High School, pulled off schemes that defrauded banks and individuals of nearly $10 million from August 1998 through March 2000, federal prosecutors said.

Using the name Steven Heitman, Rowe persuaded two Microsoft millionaires to back a North Seattle ski and snowboard business, Nordic Sports Haus, sometime in 1998.

With the support of those investors, Rowe then obtained accounts and loans at two financial institutions, prosecutors said.

In September 1999, he persuaded one of his investors to back the purchase of a used luxury sports-car business, Sports Cars International, also in North Seattle, and then got $7 million in financing from a bank to fund the business, according to federal prosecutors.

He then used his access to investors' funds and his businesses' bank accounts to steal millions of dollars that he wired to Las Vegas and then gambled away or spent.

Rowe pleaded guilty here in late December to bank fraud, wire fraud and interstate transportation of money obtained by fraud.

In a separate scheme, he pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and to impersonating a marshal in 1994 to get a law-enforcement discount on gun purchases.

Rowe's sentence will run consecutively with prison terms stemming from unrelated impersonation and theft convictions in San Diego last year.

Information from The Associated Press was included in this report.