Letter to FBI from Hope Ballantyne Victim
Wordy
To: FBI
C/O Duty Agent
Fax: (415) 553-7674
As requested, here is all the info I have on San Francisco’s illustrious
con artist, Hope Marie Ballantyne. You will note that she has several
names and social security numbers through which she obtains employment,
apartments and loans.
Hope has not paid income tax - ever, probably. Might want to call the
IRS on that one. Additionally, she stole my mail repeatedly (to cover
the bad check and the charges she made on my accounts), as well as stole
and destroyed the mail of Peter Gorgone, another roommate, to whom she
wrote bad checks. Hope also has a tendency to steal courtesy checks and
new credit cards out of the mail – other people’s – and use them. She
stole a new credit card out of the mail from Cathy Mezcal, with whom she
stayed (Kim Taber knows this woman and her phone number), as well as
courtesy checks from Brad Mendelsohn’s mail. She used those too.
She has also used the internet to defraud people, specifically
craigslist.org, through which she defrauded someone out of concert
tickets. She also used craigslist to find apartments. Incidentally,
Craig Newmark has allowed us to post warnings on his site, which led to
the newspaper article as well as a Saga following and consequent number
of Hope sightings. I will likely post again shortly, as clearly she is
still in SF and in search of her next target.
Hope was raised in Albuquerque, NM. She went to Manzano High School and
was apparently Senior Class President in 1988. We’re not sure about her
dad; conflicting reports name him as Gary and Frank, but nobody seems to
know where he is. We do know that her mother is named Marsha
Ballantyne, and is a resident of and night waitress in New Orleans, LA.
Hope went to the University of New Mexico; we don’t know if she
graduated. We do know that she moved to San Diego in 1992 and stuck an
old high school friend for $500 in phone bills and rent, then split – to
L.A., presumably. We suspect that she has some fraud problems in New
Mexico, as she has a list of multiple addresses there – and apparently,
according to Rachel Higgins, there was a rumor floating with the old
high school crew that Hope had been put in the slammer for fraud. There
has been no corroboration of that information.
Hope worked at International Creative Management (ICM) as well as
Endeavor Talent Agency in Los Angeles. She was the assistant to Richard
Weitz. Most of her LA victims were coworkers or industry friends. The
LAPD has some reports as to bad checks and other antics that Hope
carried out down there – stolen checks, stolen account numbers, a stolen
car. She was using the name Hope Ballantyne at the time… in fact, it
seems that all of her aliases are unique to San Francisco.
Hope was arrested two weeks ago on a citizens’ arrest by Scott Robinson,
her then-boyfriend, for forging two checks out of his checkbook. She
spent 24 hours in jail, and was released despite the rather large
collection of complaints currently residing at the SFPD and the SF DA’s
office. Both Inspector Wismer of the SFPD and Janet Prieto at the DA’s
office have these reports and, likely, contact information for the
claimants. Janet also has all of the spiral notebooks that Hope left at
my house – pages upon pages of scrawled names, addresses, phone numbers…
the diary of a con artist, left behind when she scampered from my home
in a hurry after I discovered that her rent check was written out of a
closed account – an account with which many of us have become
infuriatingly familiar.
Vanessa Hua of the San Francisco Chronicle is also a good resource. It
is Vanessa that wrote the article (attached) that ran on the front page
of the Sunday Chronicle. Vanessa is currently working on another story
about Hope, apparently centering around the pathetic fact that she is
still on the street and treated with seeming disinterest by both the
police department and the D.A .
Please note that my list of victims is nowhere near complete. These are
the victims that have come to my attention; I guarantee that there are
several more of which I know nothing. Hope is a big fan of yoga,
salons, and small boutiques – anywhere she can obtain a luxury service
and talk her way into passing a bad check, Hope is likely to enjoy.
Hope was seen yesterday in Noe Valley by one of the many Saga Followers.
That’s all I can think of at the moment; if I remember anything else
that seems germane, I’ll let you know. Please feel free to call me with
any questions; Hope deserves to be behind bars.
Happy hunting,
--
Jane daMystry
Go away. Leave me alone.